Manuel Rivas - Books Burn Badly

‘I don’t think anyone will dance on his grave,’ said Chelo on the return journey. ‘He’s in a good state. He looks after himself. By the way, it was almost impossible to take a photograph of him.’

‘That’s right, he’s not a fan of photos,’ replied the judge.

‘Who was that Barry Goldwater he likes so much?’

‘A senator from Arizona. Supposedly from McCarthy’s school, but a lot cleverer. A thorn in the side of the Kennedys. A good, strong conservative, he called him. Funny. It’s the first time he’s been nice about an American politician.’

It would take Gabriel longer to see a portrait of Santiago Casares. He had a look in Espasa, an extensive encyclopedia that joined forces on the walls with the volumes of Aranzadi. It didn’t even give his name, despite the fact he’d been Prime Minister. A pamphlet his father kept had a caricature signed by Rogelio Rivero. A terrible drawing which said something about the quality of the text. The portrait was followed by a kind of introduction in rhyme: Even knowing God’s might, / I still don’t understand / how it is he might / turn into such a blight / such a miserable man. There it was, at the bottom of the large drawer in his desk. The folder for Santiago Casares, underneath the marked, underlined novels by John Black Eye.

The comments in the Crypt were few and far between, and always along the same lines. A general condemnation expressed with utter rage, a contempt that took in all the letters of that name with which Gabriel maintained a hidden relationship. Because the man himself did not exist. The link was with his name. Santiagcasares Qu. What he heard, when he heard something, was talk of a Dandy, Señorito, Mason, Hyena, Murderer, Consumptive Nuisance. A strange mix, words that made it difficult to compose an image. Then there were snippets of information that complicated it all. The yacht Mosquito. The red Buick. The Atlantic Hotel. The villa in Montrove. His mother-in-law, who worked in a factory. His wife, a fashion designer. At this point, the cryptic comments became transparent, jovial, regarding the love affairs of his attractive wife. ‘Attractive? She’s a bitch on heat,’ was all they would say. He had two daughters. One, Esther, was in prison and then under constant surveillance until she managed to escape to Mexico. The other, María, had a triumphant career in the Comédie-Française. Given how reviled he was, it was amazing the number of followers that were attributed to him in the Crypt. Artists, teachers, the guy from the shoe factory, the foundry, the glassworks. . traders, most of those who were discussed in the past tense, that sunken city, almost all of whom were branded Republican supporters of Casares, who was stuck with an adjective that accompanied him, even after his death in exile, like another first surname: Pernicious Casares.

Gabriel heard everything in the alcove as if he’d been, like it or not, in a room in Durtol Sanatorium. He’d come across postcards, letters. He aimed to go through all the books in the zone of charred remains. There were almost always surprises, notes, quotations, verses, postcards from Durtol. They weren’t all like this, but those that were burnt acted as bookmarks. He identified with what the signature said, what this young man wrote. The way he addressed his parents with affectionate openness, the references to literary works and scientific discoveries, the observations on meteorological changes and their effects on the landscape and his body, the way he linked his physical condition with what was going on around him in nature. Most of all, however, he was impressed by his sense of humour when he talked about his illness, his habit of watching and noting his ailments and the state of his health.

He felt archaeological joy the day he found a photo inside an English edition of a book by Wells, The Time Machine , dated 1895. It was a photo from his youth. On the back was written ‘Winter 1900’ followed by ‘Panadeiras, Coruña’. Gabriel was sitting on a stool, reading. He quickly put it in his cabinet of curiosities, the small, wooden box which contained, among other things, his family’s most valuable donations. The tin Lisbon tram that goes to Prazeres, number 28. The postcard from Mozambique. Grandpa Mayarí’s cigar bands, which he called little brands: Flower of Havana Cigars, St Damiana, The Imperious, Havana Eden, all with beautiful drawings, especially the Alhambra, which showed two women, one white and one black, the only curiosity that stood a chance of competing with Zonzo’s Swedish swimmer. Grandpa Mayarí had also given him a ten-peso note from the Spanish Bank of Cuba, dated Havana, 1918, showing a yoke of oxen with sugarcane. Among the coins, his favourite was a sol from Peru which, on the palm of his hand, resembled a solar nugget. A share in the Spanish Hydroelectric Society, a present from his father, showing three horses in a waterfall, which Archangel Gabriel held by the reins. Picture cards from bars of chocolate, showing aviation heroes and monuments. A few stamps as well. Grandpa Pedro Samos had presented him with a Portuguese stamp from 1898 celebrating the fourth centenary of the discovery of a maritime route to India. A dark blue stamp worth fifty reis. He kept it in an envelope with a description saying it represented ‘a Manueline window with the galleon behind and, above it, the inscription “If there were more world, there I would arrive” and two medallions of Vasco da Gama and Camões’. The judge had insisted it was very valuable and would be much more so when he grew up and the thirty odd years had gone by until the fifth centenary in 1998, with him in possession of this marvel, this stamp that by then would be a secular relic. What would its value be? Who could say? With a grandiose gesture, ‘Incalculable!’

Fernando Sada, his mother’s painter friend, had given him what he claimed to be a mako shark’s tooth. He said, ‘The most perfect, successful predator ever to have lived!’ With the passing of time, as he got to know Sada better, he began to doubt the tooth belonged to a mako shark or to any shark at all. But, if it wasn’t a shark’s, what was it? One day, he met him in the street and Sada asked, ‘Have you still got that tooth belonging to the dog Cerberus?’

‘Let me see,’ said Korea on the Wooden Jetty. Gabriel had started going there with Zonzo occasionally, protracting the journey home from school. Besides, the doctor’s advice to his parents was that Gabriel should get out more. Spend as much time as possible with people his own age. Why go any further? There, next to his home, was the most alluring space in the city, the docks. So Korea played at sticking the shark’s tooth in his mouth like a false canine.

‘Be careful,’ said Gabriel, afraid he might steal it, go off with it in his mouth. ‘It’s very, very. .’

Korea spat it out on the ground.

‘Yes, you already told us it was very ancient. Well, I don’t like things that are ancient, especially teeth.’

Ren had given him the GNM game and Victorious Wings when he took part in conversations in the Crypt. He also visited the judge on his own sometimes, bringing old books and antiquities. They’d have heated discussions as to their value and the judge would almost always end up buying the items. The visits were more or less spaced out, but Gabriel remembers them from his childhood. For a long time, he thought Ren sold fragments of history and he associated his presence with a leather bag or a sturdy suitcase with metal rivets. On one of these visits, one of the last Gabriel witnessed, when the two men had wrapped up the day’s business, the inspector called him over.

‘How’s your cabinet of curiosities?’

Gabriel shrugged his shoulders. The most recent additions had been a planisphere and a small telescope. But he soon grew tired of observation. At night, if they let him, he preferred to go fishing for squid with Zonzo up by San Antón Castle. Together with his fishing apparatus, Zonzo brought something probably no one in the city had ever seen before. A portable, battery-operated television. A television you carried under your arm. Not any old piece of junk, the genuine article. While they tried to entice squid with a torch and mirror, most of the other night fishermen would take in a gangster movie, the fearless and incorruptible Eliot Ness versus Al Capone. Everybody adjusting the aerial whenever they lost the picture on the only channel. The mini-television was a present Manlle had brought back from Rotterdam. No, there was no competing with Zonzo in the field of curiosities.