Manuel Rivas - Books Burn Badly

‘Years ago, when I was small,’ said O, ‘I heard you say the dead in the Holy

Company would sometimes take a black dog for a walk.’

‘That’s right. A black bitch with a little bell.’

‘Oh, come on! Did you ever see it?’

‘No, I didn’t see it,’ replied Polka, ‘but I heard the tinkle of the bell and scarpered. Listen, O, the only one from that world I had dealings with was Antaruxa.’

‘Get away with you!’ said Olinda, who to thread a needle in the poor light of the lamp concentrated so hard she involved all her muscles, the whole house, every concentric ring from the village to its antipodes, in such a way that, were she to fail said Olympic task, the pillars of the world would come crashing down.

Polka waited for the thread to pass through the eye of the needle. And then answered the question which was still hanging in the air, although Olinda had tried to swish it away with her hand.

‘Antaruxa is a high-ranking witch. She’s the one who kisses the devil.’

‘Be quiet, Francisco!’

When Olinda addressed him by his proper name, it meant she was serious. Very annoyed. And Olinda, annoyed, was no joke. The women of Castro knew how to put you in your place and assert their authority. So Olinda said, ‘Either you shut your mouth or I’ll sew it for you.’ To carry on talking, Polka moved off a little, sat on a stool and spoke from the shadows.

‘She smacks his behind!’ hissed Polka as if he’d revealed one of the greatest secrets of the night of spirits.

‘She smacks what?’ asked O.

Olinda reprimanded Polka with her look. They remained silent. The sea of trees, the dark purple waves of Zapateira Heath, roared. O wondered whether Olinda really would sew Polka’s mouth for him. Suddenly the two of them, husband and wife, burst out laughing.

‘She kisses his bottom,’ hissed Olinda. She was laughing as well.

OLINDA SAID TO Polka, ‘We have to buy Pinche a bike.’ For such a reticent person, this was quite something. A Biblical sentence. ‘If he’s going to work on site during the week and then, at the weekend, if he wants to go and play, he won’t manage.’ Pinche had taken up Polka’s bagpipes and was making something. Polka would say to the boy, ‘The good thing about this instrument is it already has the music inside.’ Polka looked at Olinda, who was waiting for his approval, and said, ‘You’re absolutely right. He’ll need a means of transport.’ This definitely sounded convincing, dispelled any doubts, because it cost a lot of money at that time to buy a bike, even if it was secondhand.

The point is Polka made that judgement about the means of transport and was himself convinced and very proud, as if the words had come from a decisive voice of Providence which had happened by. There weren’t many bikes around at that time and lest anyone should think it a senseless waste or a whim, careful what the neighbours might say, Pinche’s father declared:

‘It’s a means of transport!’

This argument, however, so pleasing to local ears, was touted about only when they’d bought it and were coming back, father and son, leading the conveyance by the handlebars. It was a kind of tribute to its owner, an old friend, another disaffected worker by the name of Estremil. His widow said of man and machine, ‘He liked to lead it by the hand. He rarely got on it, only on the flat, and, as you know, it’s not very flat round these parts. So it’s pretty new. He was very affectionate towards his things.’ And what could have been a compliment paid to the dead turned out to be a splendid truth when they were shown the workshop and saw the order and cleanliness that reigned there, together with the heavy mourning of tools that are without their operative.

‘Would you like to see his shoes?’

An unusual invitation, thought Polka, but who could refuse to see a dead man’s shoes? So the widow opened the door of a wooden shed and there, arranged on shelves, were his shoes and boots. Not four or five pairs, but all the pairs of a lifetime. The widow pointed to the clogs he wore as a child, his football boots, his wedding shoes, a present from a brother who worked for Senra Footwear. Every Sunday morning, Estremil would take out his shoes, line them up and polish and shine them. In silence, he’d travel back down the road of existence.

‘Would you like to see his radios? He painstakingly repaired half a dozen. I can’t sell them to you because away from here they don’t work. And his books? He had a thing about books. More than he could read.’

‘Objects have a homing instinct, madam,’ said Polka.

‘And they’re selfish too!’ replied the widow. ‘Careful with the bike, boy. He loved it like a sorrel mare.’

This was the image that stuck in Pinche’s mind. As soon as he took possession of the machine, he felt the tug of a tetchy, resentful animal.

Surrounded by a pack of children, they stopped in front of the Cuckoo’s Feather bar. In the face of night, in the burnt, smoky tavern light, the bike had an animal aura, a cervine air. The machine was waiting for some kind of communal recognition and people lent themselves to the task.

‘You need to keep the chain well oiled. ’Tis the vehicle’s soul.’

‘The frame’s heavy. It’ll be tough to ride uphill.’

‘What goes up must come down.’

‘Who d’you buy it from if you don’t mind me asking?’

And Polka let it out, ‘From Estremil de Laz.’ He realised too late. The information was inappropriate, then at least, and he tried unsuccessfully to correct his mistake, ‘I mean, from the bike’s widow.’ This is what happens when you trip on your tongue, you lose your sense of direction.

‘Wasn’t he run over as he was wheeling it along?’

The others eyed the bike with suspicion. Some of them moved off, partly as a joke. And Pinche and Polka were left alone.

‘You know what I think?’ asked Polka aloud. ‘You’re a bunch of fools!’

Enough said. For Polka, being a fool was the gravest insult to a man’s honour.

‘It’s just a bike,’ he said to Pinche. ‘Caress it, so it gets used to you.’

ZONZO’S MOTHER WAS almost always at the window. Or rather she walked up and down the gallery as in a glass cage. Gabriel had never seen her outside the house and there came a time he couldn’t imagine her away from the window. The large house they lived in was very similar to the Samoses’, which was also near the marina, facing the bay. The entrances to these buildings, erected for the well-to-do in the space left vacant by the collapse of the Old City wall, give on to María Pita Square and Rego de Auga on the westward side. With regard to the architects’ initial plans, what happened was a curious revolution involving light. The part that was going to be the back, with a stone wall and small windows, was transformed by means of a radical shift into an eastern front. Instead of the dour expression of smooth granite, they built large, glazed balconies. Boxes of light. A large area that gathered and harvested light. And gave it back a thousand times. Chelo Vidal was working on an essay for the forthcoming magazine Oeste , in which she described this as the most important act in ‘the history of the city’s body’. A serious essay with several drawings of ‘Women at the Window’.

Zonzo’s mother seemed never to leave the window. There she was whenever he accompanied him. Smoking. Doing her nails. Talking on the phone. Occasionally looking at the docks. And the bay beyond. On a small table for the phone were some binoculars. Zonzo barely mentioned his family. He sometimes let out the odd snippet. For example, his father was a musician on tour. He was always on tour. And if Zonzo said something, it was because Korea was there. Korea knew things.