Manuel Rivas - Books Burn Badly

The judge smiled. He knew about Ren’s obsession for typewriters. Ren had told him he had a collection at home, about twenty of them, including some that had been confiscated when war broke out. He also had a few from secret resistance groups. Sometimes, after a day’s work, he’d sit down and type. ‘Nothing that makes any sense. I just bash the keys.’ Biff, bang, wallop. It made him feel good, hitting those machines.

‘All this in confidence, right, your honour? Strictly between ourselves.’

‘One day, you’ll have to invite me to your sanctuary, Ren.’

One day. One day he’d have to extend an invitation. ‘It’s all a mess. You can imagine what it’s like living on your own.’

‘You know what the Portuguese say? “Desire of solitude leads to great virtue or wickedness.”’

‘All my vice is taken up with eating.’

Samos was clearly talking through one side of his mouth, but thinking something different. He’d grabbed the mallet. And was thumping the palm of his hand.

‘Thanks for the Bible, Ren. A good price too.’

Yeah. Thumping away at the palm of his hand.

He asked, ‘Any other news?’

Beating the palm of his hand. Looking elsewhere. At the mystery of the leather bag.

‘I’d tell you, Samos, if there were.’

‘Nothing about the valiente of Finisterra?’

‘Nothing, your honour. I’ve done all I could. Been through all the lists. The Falange. The knights militia. Those who transferred Casares Quiroga’s library. Those posted to his house. Those at the docks and in María Pita. The squad of workmen who disposed of the remains. I’ve been through it all. Conducted searches. Nothing. Better forget that book, your honour. I’m after another, by that Irishman, you said belonged to Huici. I don’t think it’s far off. That’s what my nose tells me. When you’re least expecting something is when it knocks at the door. That’s the way of old things.’

HE SAW HERCULES go by, that crazy photographer with the horse. Terranova’s friend. He couldn’t help it. His orbital look upset things. Not for him, but for his memory. Blasted memory, always up to no good. Going off like that without his permission. Now following the photographer and his horse. He knew their story. The horse was from Cuba, Vidal had brought it with his son’s photographic equipment. But Leica had kept it in his studio. He wanted to be an artist. Not lead a horse about. So he rented it to Hercules, or lent it, whatever the arrangement was, you never know, they belonged to the same group, did him a favour, lent him the horse and instant camera. The horse’s eyes were well done. The point is horse and photographer made him nervous. It was too much. Why hadn’t he gone as well, that colossus, cowboy, hick, subnormal, champ, son of a whore, why hadn’t he left instead of wandering around the city like a ghost complete with wooden quadruped?

Tomás Dez was so distracted, distracted and disturbed, as if he’d heard ‘Chessman’ carried on the breeze, was so preoccupied he didn’t notice his secretary’s warning signs when he reached the censor’s office. So this stranger coming up to him, dressed like a sailor from a spectral boat, caught him by surprise.

‘Are you the censor?’

Censor? It was true. He was one of the censors. He gave him a supercilious look. ‘I’m very busy.’ And carried straight on to the door of his office.

‘I was forsook!’

He turned around as if he’d heard a strange, inescapable code.

‘You what?’

‘I’ve been waiting for months for a reply. My book. A book of poems. Called I Was Forsook .’

‘What’s it about?’

‘The Most Mysterious of the Mysterious.’

Interesting. I was forsook? I was forsook? Part of his memory identified the echo.

‘Just a minute,’ said Dez. ‘I’ve some matters to attend to and then I’ll come back to you.’

He was feeling generous. Time to redeem yourself, Dez, said his ironic side. Possibly the taste on his palate after chewing ‘Chessman’, the condemned man’s song. Why be despotic with this old sailor in a worn overcoat, invoking the Most Mysterious? He shut the door and rummaged through the pile of originals waiting for a report. It had been some time since he’d read or processed anything. His problem with dermatitis was getting worse. Other times, it cleared up completely. Like now.

There it was: I Was Forsook . Signed: Aurelio Anceis.

He opened the book. Was hit by the unforeseeable. By way of a preface, two lines from a medieval poem by Pero Guterres:

They all say God never sinned,

but mortally I see him sin.

What was this? He turned the page. Read:

CRUMBS

Word-crumbs

rounded and

polished

by the fingers of silence,

with the inflamed accuracy of

beads in a rosary

on the star-map of

an oilskin tablecloth.

Crumbs like these

can save hands.

He read:

CRUSADE

I the warrior thank you,

my God,

for crippling me.

I was a good shot,

but you, Lord,

direct a bullet with your eyes:

in the rifle’s soul,

an hallelujah caws.

Commander Dez would recite the poem ‘Crusade’ that evening at a literary gathering in Rita Angélica’s home. Everyone was amazed. Somebody had just dedicated a piece of nonsense to Christopher Columbus. They were all sitting around in armchairs decorated with chintz. They knew he was forthright. They still remembered the day he read Pemán’s ‘Beast and the Angel’, which sounded like a further declaration of war. But this poem. .

They were stunned. Rita suggested, ‘It’s very different from your previous work.’

You could say that again! He read:

CONCENTRATION CAMP (I)

Your rays

this beautiful Sunday morning

are like a divine roving eye

moments before the attack.

He read:

CONCENTRATION CAMP (II)

You’re like the house-cat, Lord,

which doesn’t go out to hunt,

but makes corpses

to play with.

He read:

BURNING BOOKS

As the fruit falls,

the emptiness is not left alone.

Why else

this itching of the eyes?

He lifts the receiver. Dials an internal number. He can’t picture the visitor. Can’t see his face. He’s too anxious. Tells his secretary, ‘The guy waiting in a sailor’s hat and coat, don’t let him leave.’

‘Why are you so angry with God?’

The cough that exploded violently from his chest, which Anceis suppressed by placing a handkerchief over his mouth, didn’t make him any weaker. Rather it suggested he had little to lose. Dez the censor finally understood the unusual precision, the physiological composition, of certain passages. Like this one from ‘The Fisherman Remembers the Matchstick-maker’:

The ball of spit won’t come out,

strikes against glass-paper lips

and ignites like failed phosphorus

in the white Nova Scotia night.

After the coughing fit, he was again strong enough to speak.

‘What do you think? I censured myself before coming here,’ said Aurelio Anceis suddenly. ‘Imagine a verse that simply reproduced the legend on official coins: “Caudillo of Spain by the grace of God”. This excess is overt blasphemy. The total lack of God is an excess and excess, a terrible lack. Which leads to a second verse, an elementary question: “Could I speak to the Boss, please?”’