Manuel Rivas - Books Burn Badly

‘You did well to censure that,’ said Dez ironically. ‘It would have been unpublishable. But the sense of unease, the constant allusions to defeat. This poem entitled “News of Defeat”. . You could have found another date that wasn’t the 1st of April. You discourage the victors, so imagine the losers. This other one that speaks of the 18th of July. You should be more careful. Coming here. Talking about it.’

Aurelio Anceis’ face had a knotty seriousness. He didn’t move and his breathing, a loud, inner bubbling, sounded like that of someone living inside him. His eyes, half-closed, seemed to have landed on gaps in his rough skin, like shiny beetles attracted by his elongated eyelashes.

‘In the poem about a doris, there’s some respite at least: “The lonely fisherman constructs a place with his oars. . Constructing somewhere with a lonely fisherman from Halifax.”’

‘You think? Do you know what a doris is?’

‘I do now. I asked. Thanks to you. Poetry’s mission is also to inform.’

Dez the censor stood up and went over to the window. He referred to the labourers, all the people in the street, ‘Everybody keeps a safe distance. Everybody except for the poets. Those who reveal the inner sanctuary, get to say the unspeakable.’

Aurelio Anceis watched his hand moving like a baton.

‘They’re unaware,’ Dez continued, ‘of a metaphysical change in history. From being to time, and from time to being. Off with time!’ He rubbed his hands. A way of applauding himself, thought Anceis. And then lamented, ‘They think I’m talking about watchmaking. Makes no difference. Your poems, Mr Anceis, are extraordinary!’

He fell silent. Looked at him. He was waiting for some kind of reaction. That was a real compliment, thought Anceis. But he didn’t say anything.

‘In short, I’ll do whatever it takes to publish them.’ And he added jokingly, ‘If necessary, we’ll move heaven and earth!’

Then Anceis had a sense of foreboding. Something that sprang up in his intestines like a biological warning and affected his poems. Suddenly the reason he was there ceased to be relevant. He held his sailor’s hat, turning it slowly, not always in the same direction, but like someone steering. He stood up, put on his hat and made to take back the original. Dez got there first. ‘Extraordinary.’ He opened the folder and read an extract he didn’t know, but pretended he did. He recited the last bit as if he knew it off by heart.

Silent woman of Godthab,

I can hear the purple pigment of your eyes,

the thread of your murmur

linking a long, luminous word I don’t understand.

Blessing on the kayak leading this needle through the sheets of ice.

‘Mysterious,’ said Dez. ‘There’s something moving.’

Anceis watched him silently.

‘Godthab?’ asked the censor. ‘Somewhere to do with God?’

‘It’s a port in Greenland.’

Not wanting to be subjected to a poetic interrogation, he volunteered a few bare details.

‘Most of the cod-fishing fleet refuels in St Pierre, St John’s or Nova Scotia. I spent time on a ship that went a little further, to the Davis Strait, on the edge of the Arctic Polar Circle. We stopped over in Godthab.’

‘Just once?’

‘That’s right.’

‘So the Godthab woman really existed? Was she an Eskimo?’

‘She was an Inuit. They say Inuit. It means person. Eskimo is an eater of raw flesh. Inuit is a person.’

‘What happened? I imagine you can say. Did you take her on board ship?’

Anceis became thoughtful. One hand explored the other. Dez couldn’t know, but the old sailor was slotting breadcrumbs between his fingers. They headed and cleaned the cod, using canvas gloves. The fish from the sea were covered in slime that filtered through the canvas and, with the cold, caused cracks around the finger-joints, which were very difficult to heal and withstand. The best way to avoid the fingers rubbing together was to sleep with breadcrumbs between them.

But these were intimate, insignificant details. What did they matter to this bureaucrat who wouldn’t let go of his texts, whom books had to ask for permission to exist and who was suddenly on heat because of the Godthab woman?

Aurelio Anceis said, ‘All the information you need is in the poem. It’s a poem with a lot of information.’

And added, ‘Sorry, but I have to leave.’

FERNS WERE HER merchandise. Green ferns. She carried a huge bundle.

‘Half the mountain, my dear.’

She sold them at Muro Fishmarket as a way of bedding and protecting the fish that were exported in pinewood boxes. In the case of women carrying ferns on top of their heads, there was a strange coincidence. They brought the largest burden and took away the fewest coins. One day, Lola, painted by Chelo, made some extra income. She came with the whole mountain on top of her head. On St John’s Eve, she brought posies containing seven aromatic herbs. They were soaked in water overnight for the healing bath of the morning, since this herbal water washed inside and out. The posy was then kept at home and a year later, dried out, thrown on to the St John bonfires. Which is why there were three paintings by Chelo Vidal of that woman from Orro. Woman with Ferns. Woman with St John Posies . And Woman with Bramble Sphere .

If you calmly study the woman carrying ferns, who looks the most humble, she eventually acquires a noble bearing. As if she held a large, natural basket, a mysterious heart of the forest, a green monstrance. Talking of wild plants, it was she who one day said, ‘For me, brambles make the best rope.’

‘Brambles?’

‘They’re as flexible as string and as tough as leather. It’s just a shame about the prickles.’

Chelo was stunned by her description. She’d always thought of brambles as aggressive and intractable, only letting up during the blackberry season. Even then, you had to pick the fruit as if your fingers were a blackbird’s beak.

A blackbird hopped between Chelo’s head and the Woman with Ferns.

‘Of course life is full of blackberries and prickles,’ said Lola, the Woman with Ferns. ‘It’s a brier from start to finish.’

This conversation gave rise to what today is one of Chelo Vidal’s most famous works. In many reviews, it is given as the pinnacle of a new symbolism, being in this sense the most direct painting in the series ‘Women Carrying Things on Top of Their Heads’. But this doesn’t stop it being one of her most enigmatic works because of what some have termed ‘the unsettling calm’ of the Woman with Bramble Sphere .

‘Is it possible to make a ball of brambles?’

‘Why not? You just have to scrape off the prickles and weave the stems together.’

‘No, I mean without leaves, but with prickles.’

The ball of brambles resembles an armillary sphere. The woman in the portrait, like many others who carry weights, has a cloth crown to support the weight, but in her case the cloth is a silvery grey and really does look like a crown, perhaps because what it supports is more overtly symbolical. From a distance, it resembles a sphere. From close up, the coarse skein is like a labyrinth, made more dramatic by the prickles. The portrait would be very severe were it not for the gesture of the woman looking to her left, slightly foreshortened, half smiling, thought Chelo, and unaware of the weight she’s carrying, as if it were an extravagant hat. Why’s she smiling?

‘What’s so funny?’ asked Chelo.

‘It’ll sound strange to you, but I was thinking about the day of my first communion. We were all dressed up, looking very smart. The best we could do, by borrowing things or whatever, but smart. The boys in a suit and tie, like little men, and us in white. An aunt of mine worked as a maid in a house in Sigrás and the lady of the house lent me a tiara with a tulle veil. So there we were, kneeling in front of the altar, at the most solemn moment, waiting for the Sacred Form, when I went and glanced at Daniel. He was like a squirrel, never stayed still. It was funny seeing him looking so formal, with cropped hair and hands held together in prayer. He suddenly looked back, without losing his composure, and. .’