Manuel Rivas - Books Burn Badly

‘Where does the word “sport” come from? From “port”, right? When the sailors were at sea, they were at sea. When they were on leave, they were ex portus .’

The operator joined his index fingers and spoke slowly as if describing a graft of universal import, ‘ Ex portus . Sport. Sporting. Deportivo Coruña.’

Korea’s real name was Miguel. He was sometimes escorted, like a boss, by a group of other boys from Casas Baratas. They called themselves the Red Devils. Today he was alone. Wearing a black jumper with two yellow horizontal stripes and the trousers with zips for non-existent pockets. He’d arrived there by tracking Curtis, the photographer, and his wooden horse, Carirí. He was, for some reason, intrigued by him and followed him down through the port. Very intrigued.

‘What was that champ’s name?’

‘Arturo da Silva,’ said the crane operator. ‘You know where Silva is, don’t you?’

‘Yeah. The ends of the earth. So what makes him a champ too?’ he asked, looking in the direction of the horse photographer.

‘I told you a thousand times,’ replied Ramón Ponte. ‘That’s Hercules. He’s called the champ of Galicia because he was the one who carried the champ’s gloves for him. They were friends. Went everywhere together. Arturo died without losing. Which means he’s still champ. Isn’t that right, Curtis?’

Curtis nodded without speaking, a forced, polite movement. He had two cherry stones in his mouth, which he moved patiently around like a set of gears, as if he were chewing a clock’s escape mechanism.

‘Arturo da Silva,’ said Korea, again addressing Curtis and adopting a boxer’s stance. ‘What was he good at, eh, Hercules? How did he fight?’

It looks as if Curtis won’t reply this time either. Across his big, open eyes, like a hare’s, pass large films. Not fuzzy patches, but real forests. Through the clouds, the eyes watch the legendary cranes, the irresistible machines of Maritime Awakening’s operators. In the past, they each had a name on the cabin: ‘Carmiña’, ‘Greta’, ‘Eve’, ‘Belle Otero’, ‘Pasionaria’. These had also gone, though Ramón Ponte still had the name Carmiña , given by his father, on his cabin. Inside he still kept, and had added to, a small library, some stills and his cabinet of curiosities, whose prize exhibit was the Diligent ’s ball.

Curtis’ eyes reflect what’s outside and the view outside behaves like a thought. The hundred thousand starlings drawing a giddy cloud, a protective bird in the city’s firmament. The mullets joining in a single marine muscle that snakes between the pontoons. The jumps of the Sea Club’s Tritons and sirens, magnificent dancers of the tango too. Three sea urchins that Arturo da Silva throws in the air in a risky piece of juggling.

‘Nothing. He’s got stuck again,’ says Korea. ‘Hey, champ! Hey, Hercules! Nothing.’

Marconi goes by, quickly, in a pair of espadrilles. He keeps making a sound, a constant hum. Ommmmmm. Occasionally he bursts into onomatopoeias. As if he were spitting out screws into the oily waters of the port. A few mullets leap up to snatch a kataplum. A plof. A pliss plam boom. Tackateee! The crane operator calls out to him. Marconi panics when he hears his own name. Who’s calling? Why? What for? At first, he remains upright. Rigid. Even his eyes are so frightened they don’t move. He’s hoping a mute let slip a word. But the operator again bawls out his name, ‘Hey, Marconi!’ And then he jumps in the air, doesn’t look back and accelerates on the back of his hum. Ommmmmm. All he remembers from the last time they took him — ‘It’s nothing, just routine’ — is he’d decided to stop being who he was. He explained to his captors that beating affected his skin a lot because he was diabetic. He had the innocence of people who watch the operation of cause and effect. ‘What union do you belong to?’ ‘The Union of Light.’ That was the name of the electrical workers’ union. He shouldn’t have said that. When he regained consciousness, his body was no longer bruised, it was almost rotten. They did it badly. They hit him so hard, in the barracks of the Falange, instead of killing him, they took him past death. They smashed his insides. Realised he’d gone crazy. All that came out of his mouth was a rasp of words. Disconnected phrases, bits hanging off his lips, which he only got rid of with his onomatopoeias, blisters bursting with language. Shhhhhh, kataplum! Maybe they didn’t kill him out of superstition. Or because they’d gone a step past death. As he strode through the city, his humming was a broadcast, a constant reminder. He’d opened a door into fear. So he had to find a solution. Live in another sphere. At an ultrasonic frequency. It was on that wavelength he came into syntony with Galatea of the Seaweed and Shells, spokesperson for the Hypernauts of Infinite Space and the Inhabitants of Emptiness. He searches again with the dial. Finally locates the point. Ommmmmm.

There’s Marconi. Everything he owns is in that sailor’s canvas bag. All his belongings. Valves, cables, coils, washers, bulbs, all kinds of screws, stuff he’s collected to build the decisive machine, a transmitter and receiver of Souls to communicate with the Inhabitants of Emptiness and transform their signals into cosmozoons, invisible spores like pollen, words with a translucent samara or wings like the pine-seed, carriers of a different life. He wanders around the city at night, rummaging through the rubbish from electrical repair shops, ironmongers, mechanical workshops. Apparently his house is full of faulty equipment. A house full of faults. During the day, he puts a new prototype of the Soulder into his bag and heads for Hercules Lighthouse. He always tests the machine in the same place. Sitting on the same stone. With a little exaggeration, it might be said the rock is gradually taking the shape of a chair where Marconi sits. It was there he was interviewed by Stringer, who introduced him as a Galician Roswell. The Hercules Man, a human body carrying an extraterrestrial being. The first time a UFO incident had been recorded in Galicia.

‘Where are you from?’

‘I belong to an astral diaspora, the Inhabitants of Emptiness.’

‘What are you doing next to Hercules Lighthouse?’

‘It’s a point of cosmic convergence. It appears in the genetic information of the Explorers of Infinite Space. Among extraterrestrials, it’s vox populi. This is where I hope to start the Soulder, an apparatus for receiving cosmozoons.’

‘What are cosmozoons?’

‘Particles of life from other systems.’

Marconi always sitting on the same stone.

‘Why do you always sit on this stone?’

‘It’s not a stone. It’s the Soulder’s stator.’

‘What exactly is a Soulder?’

‘A space vehicle I’m trying out, which one day will move as a result of the energy accumulated in this ancient lighthouse. The historians of antiquity talk of a Large Mirror in this lighthouse of Brigantia which shows a reflection of Ireland. What are we talking about? A cosmic observation point, an equally old UFO base.’

It was the first time an article had been written about UFOs in Galicia. Stringer highlighted the similarities between the Roswell Man, who appeared in 1947 near Corona (New Mexico, USA), and the Hercules Man, who landed for the first time in Coruña in 1957, as he himself has confessed. They’re both pale. Both completely bald. Only that the famous one died and disappeared while the other, who so far has escaped notice, lives on among us with an assumed identity. In his own words. An exclusive interview in the evening Expreso .

‘See, it made the front page!’

Tito Balboa or Stringer is elated. It’s his first piece. A report that will set tongues wagging. His first journalistic scoop.