Manuel Rivas - Books Burn Badly

Now, in 1935, Héctor Ríos is on his way to Madrid, to the hall of residence, with his brilliant academic record and plans to become, with the help of the prestigious penologist Luis Jiménez de Asúa, one of the youngest public prosecutors in the Spanish Republic. Héctor Ríos, with whom he’d shared children’s games on Parrote Beach, secondary studies, declamation classes in the Craftsmen’s Circle and a youthful passion for Herbert George Wells.

‘You’re not going to consider me an enemy, Mr Samos?’ His Kantian glasses looked at him with irony and Samos again felt small. ‘If you are,’ declaimed Ríos on the faculty steps, ‘I will not allow it.’

He came down the steps.

Held out his hand.

Samos was slow to accept the gesture, but did so in the end, unwillingly. He knew this meant carrying on the conversation. He now despised what he had once thought of as a virtue. Héctor Ríos enjoyed a polemic. Never gave in. So he didn’t pass up the opportunity to suggest, for his forthcoming thesis on Juan Donoso Cortés’ influence on contemporary thought and more especially on the prominent German jurist Carl Schmitt, he’d do well to read the Austrian jurist Hans Kelsen, to which Samos replied he’d already read a bit and he wouldn’t last a round with Schmitt. ‘With the rise of Nazism,’ answered Ríos, ‘while most jurists went into hiding, Hans Kelsen had the courage and the clarity to say there were only two possible kinds of State: a democracy or an autocracy. That is to last not just a round, but the whole fight. Kelsen is no wizard, but he’s right. It’d be crazy to put the terrestrial globe on your Mr Schmitt’s head.’

Right? There was no point arguing now. The sun’s gone past the door already, Ríos. No, he didn’t say that. It wasn’t the right time. Héctor still lived in his old liberal world, full of ideas. Nor was he going to answer the question Ríos then asked, begged him to think about. ‘Can you be a Christian, a Catholic conservative, and approve of Fascism? Isn’t tyranny the ultimate moral failure?’

In conversation, Samos was usually cautious. Not in writing. Recently, under the pseudonym Syllabus, he’d been expressing himself more and more freely, getting more and more excited. He converted this ardour into speech. He felt like talking with ferocity.

He had nothing to think about. That was his answer.

‘I’ve nothing to think about,’ he said suddenly.

It felt good, addressing him like this, boldly. Ríos had always been up front, but now he’d taken over his position. It was a strange, thrilling sensation. Ríos, the mature young man, struck him now as naive. His revered Schmitt talked of a ‘providential’ meeting with Donoso Cortés’ Speech on Dictatorship . He felt the same ‘providential’ moment with Schmitt. He gave Ríos some information he lacked: history was preparing to move with steely ferocity. Ríos still trusted in Wells’ fiction in one pocket and Viqueira’s cards on ethics in the other. On his way to the hall of residence in Madrid, with his jacket worn out at the elbows.

‘No, I’ve nothing to think about. And since you ask, I have an answer to that, which Donoso Cortés gave me in 1849.’

Héctor knew what he meant, he was talking about a dictatorship. He jokingly pulled a pocket watch out of his waistcoat. ‘1849? I haven’t time to go so far back, Ricardo. I’ve a train ticket for tomorrow.’

Samos looked at him in such a way it was clear he never wished to see him again. ‘That’s not an answer, it’s a frivolity.’ He then turned his back on him and strode off. He didn’t mind if Ríos thought he was running backwards.

‘Your priest, Mr Schmitt, is wrong when he affirms the history of the world begins with Cain. After that, everything in him is mistaken.’

Ricardo Samos turned around for a moment. He felt invincible, stimulated by the idea of steely speech. He could speak boldly. Now Héctor Ríos would be the fool. ‘ Auctoritas non veritas facit legem. ’

‘Come back, Ricardo!’ shouted Ríos. ‘You’re a couple of centuries past 1849. Come back for the book, for civilisation!’

He spoke theatrically, but was really sorry Samos had refused the book by Wells. He felt a pain in his stomach. Poor Wells. It’s lunchtime. I’ll look after you.

‘I still don’t think you should take it so seriously,’ insisted the censor. ‘You have to be above all this.’ It seemed like a good way of both calming and complimenting the judge. ‘We’re talking here about western novels, trashy literature. Even if the author meant it, who’s going to connect you with the Judge of Oklahoma? Who reads it, Ricardo? Ask at a bookstall and you’ll see. Sailors from the Great Sole, unemployed youths, prisoners. .’

He stopped because this seemed to worry the judge. He could see what he was thinking: Prisoners? So they read John Black Eye too?

‘You may think I’m exaggerating, Dez,’ said Samos after a pause, ‘but I have my reasons. I want a muzzle on that mouth.’

He opened the drawer, put The Yoke Collector inside and locked it.

‘Bring me that Black Eye’s head on a platter!’

19 August 1957

BIBLES WERE THE library’s main attraction. Copies from different periods and in different languages. They filled the central shelves in the Italian room where Samos had his study. This collection of various editions of Scripture was the most obvious reason the judge’s office had been given the name the Crypt. The room, with its alcove, had the air of a reserved space. And time was disciplined and acted in accordance with this designation, placing religious objects, hunting trophies, photographs and prints in silver frames in gaps between books or on the mantelpiece. As for the library itself, it contained the collection of Bibles, which was always growing, and books the judge would consult in matters of law, together with reference works concerning history and thought. The alcove was the home of classical literature and, to use the judge’s expression, ‘a resting-place for all sorts of flotsam’ he’d picked up along the way in his foremost bibliographical search for copies of the Old and New Testaments. The alcove was altered slightly when it was decided Gabriel might use it, not that he was forced to do so, rather he was the one who took it over as a study, to the great surprise of his parents, especially Chelo, his mother. ‘It’s a good place for bats,’ she said to Gabriel. This is partly why he liked it. Because it was dark and secret, like a lair, in such a luminous house, a kind of bell-jar facing the bay. On the other side of the street, there were no houses. On the other side was the sea. Boats. The docks. Into the recess, into his cave, Gabriel carried his cabinet of curiosities.

He wasn’t very outgoing. He was almost always silent, bad-tempered, thought Gabriel, but then he decided it was something permanent, nothing to do with his mood, since when he laughed he looked bad-tempered as well. His body seethed slowly. It was one of those large bodies which want to offload things, starting with his suit. Perhaps it was because of his physique, thought Gabriel, that he couldn’t help being brusque in his movements and speech. He was brusque when he expressed his opinion in conversations in the Crypt, those meetings that were held in the judge’s office almost every Thursday evening. He had a tendency to exclaim and come out with short, cutting sentences. His manner of speaking caught Gabriel’s attention at a time he was having his own struggle with language. Whenever he greeted Chelo, he tried to change attitude completely. He was brusque in this too. He did so with such exaggerated politeness his body seemed on the verge of violence.