Manuel Rivas - Books Burn Badly

Gabriel noticed her apron was covered in scales he hadn’t seen before.

‘Quiet, woman. This is not the place,’ said the judge, walking off. ‘It is not the place.’

She stepped forwards, intervened, ‘Where then can I see you?’

‘Your lawyer. Talk to your lawyer.’

‘My lawyer?’

She stared at the ground in fright. Seemed to be looking for something important she’d lost.

‘My lawyer?’

‘That’s right. Talk to him. He’ll tell you what to do.’

‘He’s the one who said there was nothing to do unless you wanted. He said you’re the law, in such cases some judges have one yardstick and others, another, and it depends on you whether or not he goes to prison. It’s the first time, your honour. He’s not a criminal. He just has this thing.’

‘Well, he’s going to be cured of this thing. Put back on the straight and narrow.’

‘You think? No. He’s going to be smashed to pieces like a crystal vase.’

The judge suddenly wheeled around towards the woman carrying sea urchins on top of her head. Apart from height, apart from the fact that one was a man and the other, a woman, this was the principal, visible, undeniable difference between the two. He was wearing a hat, a wide-brimmed, cinnamon-coloured hat, while she had a basket. Gabriel was with his father. Next to him and on his side. This street, hour, were their space and time. The woman had disturbed their tranquillity, come from outside, with a basket full of sea urchins and problems. A basket she set down, exposing a kind of cloth crown on top of her head, which took the weight. She didn’t even realise she’d left it there, her cloth crown.

‘He’s already considered to be a danger. A danger to society!’ The woman raised her voice as she said this, and a few passers-by turned around, the kind of silent twist that imputes guilt to the object under scrutiny. ‘That’s punishment enough. He can’t find work. He can’t drive or get a passport. His life is ruined. A danger? People in the street call him “girlie”. He’s the one in danger.’

The woman’s hand dipped inside a pocket of her apron, rummaged around and produced a newspaper cutting. Gabriel was reminded of Mayarí’s strips. This printed piece of paper had a layer of blood and fish scales.

‘He’s already appeared in the paper. Take a look. His name and everything. He’s already an outcast. Please don’t send him to Badajoz, your honour.’

‘He’ll be cured there. He has an illness. And he’ll be cured.’

‘In prison? He’ll be cured in prison? How? With beatings? Ice-cold water? Electricity?’

Her chest was heaving. She seemed about to burst and the judge took Gabriel by the shoulder and moved off. All she did was cry. Silently, not with sobs. Fat tears rolled down her cheeks.

‘Please leave us alone.’

‘Fools,’ she said. ‘You fools!’

The judge glanced angrily in all directions. Being called a fool infuriated him. Somebody in the crowd might know him. This stinking fishwife, with her basket like a picture hat, calling the judge a fool. That’d make them laugh. No doubt Black Eye was in the vicinity. That bastard. Gabriel also looked around. He found the woman disagreeable, especially when she started crying. Crying and talking about electricity. A strange woman with a strange son, who was bothering his father and spoiling their walk. But it was also true this destination, Badajoz Prison, didn’t sound good next to Gran Antilla. On a pleasant Friday afternoon. With lots happening. On the crowded terraces, in their white jackets with anchor-like golden buttons, the waiters, instead of carrying drinks, resembled elegant sailors keeping their balance on the city’s deck.

An impression that wasn’t far away from the description the judge repeated like an advertising slogan, ‘In summer, Coruña’s an ocean liner.’

They’d walked down Real Street. As was their custom, they’d gone into Villar the chemist’s and weighed themselves on the scales. It was a magnificent machine, its brand and origin in large letters, ‘Toledo Scale Company (Ohio)’, which turned weighing yourself into a serious act, your body’s solemn incorporation into the industrial process. You stepped on to a platform and through the glass could watch the whole mechanism in action. Your weight activated it and, as you stood there, you couldn’t help seeing the device as part of yourself, transported to Ohio. When the judge weighed himself, there was a detail. He took off his hat and gave it to his son. Gabriel never knew how much his father weighed. He was slim, but had a strong constitution. And was very serious about keeping his weight in check. One of the features that distinguished him from the common herd. A definite aim he shared with Chelo, which made them different from most of their colleagues. Whenever they conducted a ‘review’, the term they used for gossip, their comments seemed to be ruled by the Ohio scales’ precise mechanism. For the most part, those under scrutiny were deemed to have put on weight.

The judge’s felt hat was very light, or so it seemed when Gabriel was holding it while his father weighed himself. Now, as he got more and more angry at the Urchin Woman’s interference, the hat appeared to be something more than an article of clothing. Something of weight. Calcareous. Part of the body.

They were at the junction of Real Street and Rego de Auga, between the Rosalía de Castro theatre and Gran Antilla. Every urban setting has its speciality and, in Gabriel’s intimate topography, this was a warm, lively place meant for happy encounters and polite greetings. The sellers’ balloons and little ships rose above the field of heads. A good spot for Curtis to stop the horse Carirí and the children to mount the horse and have their photo taken, holding on to its natural mane, which was black as jet. Which is why the unexpected reference to Badajoz, for Gabriel, suddenly caused an orographical accident. If she hadn’t said anything, anything in particular, if she hadn’t given it a name, he’d have wandered over to the window of Gran Antilla, the confectioner’s, and so given his father an excuse to dispatch this plaintive woman with her cargo of prickles. But no. No. She had referred to that place which was the first hole in the GNM or Glorious National Movement’s game of skill called ‘The Reconquest of Spain’, a present from Inspector Ren for his cabinet of curiosities, together with a game of bombardments called ‘Victorious Wings’. So that when Gabriel heard Badajoz, the steel ball started rolling and, instead of getting past and continuing on its path of conquest, it went and fell in the hole. He then heard Ren’s voice, as if it were part of the GNM’s game of skill, singing out the localities and dates the steel ball rolled past on its triumphant way, if the move was skilful: Badajoz (14/8/36), Toledo (27/9/36), Málaga (8/2/37), Bilbao (19/6/37), Teruel (22/2/38), Lérida (3/4/38), Barcelona (26/1/39) and Madrid (28/3/39).

‘Badajoz, 14th of August 1936.’

And he’d add mysteriously, ‘Yagüe. Now that was a good one!’

Whenever the ball fell in Badajoz, didn’t make it past the hole on to other scenes of conquest, he heard the refrain, ‘Now that was a good one!’ Even when an elated Ren was holding the game, it was still a sombre exclamation. Something that stuck to the city’s name like an involuntary accent. It was, after all, a mistake. It would be many years before Gabriel found out what had happened in that hole the ball sometimes landed in. Before he discovered that hole in a game of skill contained a bullring piled high with corpses, in a warlike corrida where people were the victims. The ball was always the same, but when Ren had the game and was tensing his muscles to direct the ball, it didn’t always carry on, but sometimes rolled its own way, fell in the hole labelled Badajoz and like an echo triggered that admiring ‘Now that was a good one!’ which the boy perceived as a rare distortion of meaning, since if the ball fell in the hole, you had in fact played badly.