Manuel Rivas - Books Burn Badly

‘Gypsies?’ asks the one who’s co-pilot.

The driver nods.

‘You know something? We still haven’t given it to one of them.’

And adds, ‘That other rabbit can wait.’

No one inside the black Opel says anything else. The third occupant is sitting in the back. Playing with a ring he twiddles around his wedding finger. The ring bears a skull and the inscription ‘Knights of Coruña’. One of the names used by the paramilitaries. The back seats fold down, so the car can be used for transporting cargo and people. Ideal if you’ve a large family. They confiscated two cars from the same owner. The black and the cherry Opel. The cherry Opel, a soft-top, is a beauty. Not that the owner was a tycoon. He made his money in America and, on his return, set up a garage and car-wash. He was crazy about cars. Now he prefers to walk. Avoids cars if he can. When they went to take them, he stuttered, said he’d already given money, paid what they’d asked. He was obviously fond of the cherry Opel. That summer, he’d taken his daughters and their friends for a ride along the coastal road. The driver of the death outing remembers it well. It happened by chance. They’d just been practising their shots in Bastiagueiro, greasing and warming their weapons for the military coup that was close. Having finished their training, they returned to the road, openly dressed in Fascist uniform, and one of the cars that passed by was the cherry soft-top with Mr Alvedro and the four girls wearing white silk chiffon with floral patterns. The driver remembers it with a kaleidoscopic memory. Their eyes were used to aiming at the target, concentrating so hard that all the rest — the ocean, the city grafted on to sea rock — disappeared behind the small black sign with white circles. So their eyes reacted like bees that have found their way out of darkness through the eye of a bullet when they saw the cherry soft-top come into view with those girls wearing floral patterns, their hair trailing in the breeze. They shouted. Or rather they burst in unison into a sound that might also be described as a return bullet. A visual onomatopoeia: their eyes snarled in the wake of the car accelerating down the road to Santa Cruz lined with plane trees.

Confused, perplexed, stuttering, his voice trembling, Mr Alvedro tried to stop them taking them.

‘You can see they’re no cars for war,’ he said.

He knew they were going to take them anyway. They hadn’t come to discuss mechanics, but to hop in the cars and leave. However, he felt he had to speak for them. To intercede. Say something. For the cars. He loved so much. It was a moral obligation. When they were returned, if that ever happened, they wouldn’t be the same. The vehicles stood waiting, in the shadows, lost in thought. Heads bowed.

‘The cherry’s just for outings.’

Since everyone remained silent, what he’d said swept around the corners. He realised the terrible import of the word ‘outings’. When they changed hands, things acquired a different meaning. As if he’d unwittingly said, ‘The cherry’s just for killing.’

‘That’s why we’re taking it, Mr Alvedro,’ said one of the confiscators. ‘To go on outings.’

The driver smacks his lips as if he were chewing gum, but he isn’t. He simply accumulates saliva, which he then chews. He comes to a halt just in front of the Montoyas. In the short distance that’s left, Antonio stops singing and the night’s dark breeze whirls around the Opel. The driver chews his ball of spit. The other two get out of the car, holding their pistols, aim at the basket-makers and force the Montoyas to lie down in the back, without heeding their protests. The youngest doesn’t want to let go of the baskets or maybe it’s the other way around. He’s learning the trade and fingers and osiers still form part of the weaving. The Opel pulls off. The Montoyas turn up dead in Montrove the next morning. Each with a bullet hole in their head. ‘Meningeal haemorrhage’, it says on the death certificates.

Coffee. Meningeal haemorrhage.

They were passing by.

‘They killed three basket-makers who were passing by. One of them was your age.’

‘Passing by where? Where they killed the champ?’

‘No. Wherever it happened to be. They came across the murderers’ car and were given coffee.’

As soon as he spoke, he regretted using that expression. The unreality of euphemisms. A petty, macabre genre.

‘Coffee?’

‘They killed them.’

‘Were they anarchists as well?’

‘They were just some basket-making gypsies. One of them was fourteen, another sixteen. Your age, more or less.’

‘Did they kill them because they were gypsies?’

This boy, Korea, had a hard head. Other times, it was in the clouds. You never knew if he’d heard you or not, though he did repeat snippets of conversation. As with the difference in age, there were very few similarities. He was vain, always worried about what he was wearing. One of the reasons he came down to the port. He bartered with sailors from other countries. He was crazy about jackets and weird trousers, like the bell-bottoms he’s wearing today, which are orange and covered in zips for non-existent pockets. The crane operator wasn’t particularly fussy about clothes, but what was the point of having zips if there was nothing to close? Korea had abandoned his studies and had no fixed occupation. He said he wanted to be a boxer. That’s what he said. When he turned up with his gang, it was obvious he could rule the roost, but he wasn’t normally in a group. Occasionally he’d arrive on a motorbike he’d borrowed, almost always with a girl behind. For a time, he’d often turn up with the same girl. She would be dressed in her convent school uniform. White socks, tartan skirt, green V-necked jumper and white shirt. The contrast between Korea’s style and the teenager’s uniform was funny. But all this was, so to speak, at the service of sublime nature. What was unforgettable was the girl’s long, blond hair flapping like a head on the seas. Together they looked like a fearless, beautiful human machine. They’d circle the crane a few times and then zoom off. There was a reason Korea behaved like this. The crane operator appreciated these fleeting appearances of the blonde Amazon in a schoolgirl’s white socks, as if he’d been offered a sequence from a dream. One day, Korea turned up without a motorbike, on foot, with his cap pulled down.

‘Now you can see what’s inside my head.’

He removed the cap. His head was so shaven it looked transparent, pale white, like tripe that’s just been washed.

‘What’s this?’

‘Station house style. A number zero. Have a look inside.’

He’d been arrested. Two days in the clink. He hadn’t been taken before the magistrate, there were no specific charges. But he knew why.

‘You know why you’re here, don’t you?’

He shook his head. Which they’d yanked backwards. And were holding by the hair.

‘You’re a step away from the reformatory, Goldilocks.’

It wasn’t the first time he’d heard this joke. The one about destiny. He lived next door to the remand home. They asked him about the gang of Red Devils. A fight in Vigo Square, outside the Equitativa Cinema, where he’d been seen carrying a bicycle chain as a weapon.

‘That’s history,’ he said. ‘I left it. I’m not a devil any more.’

‘When d’you leave it?’

‘Ages ago. I don’t know. A day perhaps.’

Why wouldn’t they let go of his hair? Each tug pulled out a handful, but also chippings from inside his head, bits of thought.

‘It hurts, doesn’t it? That’s your fault for having hair like a girl’s. Where’d this fashion come from, that you look like a bunch of queens? If it were short, we wouldn’t be able to pull on it like this. . and this. . and this.’