Manuel Rivas - Books Burn Badly

‘Shame she can’t come and do some painting with us in Caneiros.’

‘I’m sure she’d have loved to.’

‘The women go to the seaside and here we are, like sacred rams,’ said Dafonte. ‘On the Celtic mount. Next Sunday, we all have to go down to the sea, dress up in some seaweed and take a dip in classicism.’

Terranova started scratching at the moss and using his hands to dig with childish glee.

‘There must be some treasure down here. Did you never come here with picks, Polka?’

‘We did. When we were little. But we never found anything. Except for a siphon-bottle.’

‘A Celtic siphon-bottle.’

‘That’s right. But what farmers find every time they plough the earth are trenchcoat buttons with Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité written on them. All this you see before you was the site of a terrible battle. The Battle of Elviña. As far as I know, the worst in Galicia’s history. I myself have a button on my jacket. There, on the sleeve.’

And it was true. His jacket was hanging from the branch of a tree next to the hill-fort wall.

‘It smells of treasure,’ said Terranova. ‘I reckon it’s pretty close.’ His digging had become comical as he imitated a dog searching for a buried bone.

‘There was some treasure,’ said Seoane. ‘The treasure of the hill-forts and dolmens was routinely pillaged at the start of the seventeenth century. The king authorised one Vázquez de Orxas to excavate all the funerary monuments. He gave him exclusive rights so long as part of the profits found their way to the royal coffers. What’s surprising is that they hadn’t been looted before. The gold in America had run out and unfortunately someone thought of the truth behind the legends. People had disguised the treasure in stories. It was protected by dwarfs, Moorish princesses, winged serpents. The dwarfs were fluent in several languages, knew Latin, just like Polka, and if you spoke their secret language, they opened the door to the treasure. Old Carré told us the story of someone who stuttered and was very successful at finding treasure because the dwarfs thought he was multilingual. But Galicia’s treasure went to pot thanks to an explorer who believed in books no one else believed in and paid attention to old people’s stories. The stories were full of gold. And he wasn’t wrong. In one dolmen, he even unearthed a solid-gold duck.’

‘Something will be left. There’s always something left,’ said Terranova. ‘What was the name of that old treasure guide?’

‘ The Great Book of St Cyprian ,’ replied Seoane. ‘Probably the most widely read book in Galician history.’

‘You anarchists should edit another Book of St Cyprian. A book of treasures. There’s bound to be a wild gold duck around here.’

‘The original book was pretty anarchic,’ said Seoane. ‘Apparently you had to be able to read backwards in order to understand it.’

Polka gazed in the direction of his village.

In some way, people carried light. In words, in clothes, in gestures. Sounds belonged to the light. He’d been born there. He listened to the conversation about treasure without taking part. He recalled the legend old Mariñán had told him, the most sensible thing he’d heard on the subject of treasure. You had to be on the lookout on sunny days because the dwarfs who guarded the gems and precious metals underground sooner or later had to bring them out to dry so that they wouldn’t go rusty. Polka wasn’t interested in what was buried, but in the surface. He surveyed the view. Some sheets were spread out and acted like a mirror. What he was really looking for was Olinda, the matchstick-maker. The bit from the legends of treasure that mattered to him now was where it said you don’t find the treasure, the treasure finds you.

‘Look’ee here!’ shouted Terranova.

He began pulling out shells. He’d found an oyster bed. There were scallops too. ‘How about that,’ said Terranova. And he solemnly held up the skeleton of a sea urchin in the palm of his hand. A hypnotic sphere.

‘They obviously enjoyed sea urchins as much as your mother, Curtis.’

‘What about Mass, Polka? Who taught you the divine office?’

‘I didn’t play as a child. My only game was going to church. What I really wanted to be was a bagpiper. But I could only play at being a priest. All day in church. That was my school, my playground, my work, rolled into one. I started helping during Mass when I was very small. I was sent to be an altar boy because I was the poorest. Servers are not rich. That must be all that’s left from the time before Constantine, when the Church was virgin. If you want to be a server, it’s good to be poor. My father worked in a quarry. He died young, shortly after I was born. No, it wasn’t a rock that killed him. It’s never a rock. Some damp got inside his chest and he never recovered. Anyway, the fact is I started serving when I was aged six. Masses, novenas, rosaries, weddings, baptisms, communions, unctions. . I almost spoke Latin before Galician. My mother tongue, pardon me, was that of the Vatican. All day shut up inside. I can’t dissect Latin, but I know it off by heart. Mine was an immersion, in at the deep end. Besides, something important happened. The parish priest, Don Benigno, started losing his memory. Not gradually, the odd letter or word, but whole chunks and sentences. They left and never came back. He seemed to lose both the sentence and where it went. The space was swallowed up and then it couldn’t come back. So I was his second memory. I was supplier of misplaced sentences, so to speak, which meant I had to pay attention during the services. I was his prompt. I was a real professional. I always tried to do my best. But then Don Benigno passed away, a new priest arrived and we didn’t get on. That was the end of my serving. Don Benigno didn’t mind me being bishop during Carnival. As you know, on Ash Wednesday there’s a masked procession, when we bury the Carnival by throwing it into the River Monelos. And before letting go, we say a prayer for the soul of the deceased, a funeral Mass we call a funeral mess . Well, Don Benigno didn’t mind. I think he even found it funny. An Easter laugh. “So long as you don’t take my customers from me,” he said to me. “Carnival is soon followed by Lent.” But the new priest kicked up a fuss. No Easter funnies!’

‘Carnival is like Caneiros,’ said Holando. ‘A democratic celebration, the world turned topsy-turvy.’

‘You don’t hear the bagpipes at burials any more. When I was small, I used to serve at funerals. And that’s where I became a bagpiper. I learnt music like Latin, in one whole piece. I could have considered entering a seminary, becoming a priest, but no, it was being a bagpiper that got me excited. The bagpipes can rival the greatest bassoon. I’d go to funerals just to listen to a bagpipe requiem.’

‘The bagpipes have no future, Polka, admit it,’ Terranova intervened.

‘Who said that? I didn’t hear anything.’

‘They’ve been kicked out of the dance halls. And they’re no good for jazz or any of that. You’ll end up on your own, on the mountain, playing the bagpipes for the treasure dwarfs and their Moorish princesses.’

‘What do you mean, no good for jazz? You’re dumber than a baritone. Wind. .’

‘A trumpet, a saxophone. . That’s music, Polka. The music of the future.’

‘One day, you’ll hear the bagpipes in a jazz piece, you fool,’ replied Polka. He was really annoyed now. Everyone knew Polka was annoyed when he called someone a fool.

‘Polka’s right,’ said Seoane. ‘Mozart included a knife-grinder’s whistle in The Magic Flute .’

Luís Terranova danced on top of a rock, moving his pubis in voluptuous parody of a folk-dance: