Manuel Rivas - Books Burn Badly

‘It’s full of triggerfish,’ said the phosphorescent diver. ‘This’ll turn into an invasion. They’ll end up driving the other fish away. They’re just like pigs. Cheeky. Fearless. They come up to you, going “Oink, oink, oink!”’

Balboa wrote with tachygraphic speed, imagining the headline:

INVASION OF TRIGGERFISH

And then, so as not to forget, the onomatopoeia. Oink!

DON’T THINK THE fact he was a writer impressed me so much. For a time, a writer came to live in a house in Souto. A little house that had recently been left vacant when Hortensia died and a niece let it out, so that everything was still alive when the tenant moved in. Except for the fire. To start with, there was lots of interest. It was the end of summer. The writer went for a few walks. He wore a sailor’s hat, which made him stand out. Was very polite. He’d stop at the washing place, sit down and delicately enquire about the lives of the women and the stories they knew. When he finally left, the washerwomen would ask themselves what kind of writer this was that they had to tell him stories. Olinda would just say, ‘He asks in order to know. He does well. Some ask in order not to know.’ The worst thing was the fire. The writer couldn’t get the iron stove to work. The house ejected smoke through every crack, every hole, except for the chimney. Sometimes he’d emerge from the doorway and take a few steps, coughing, with watery eyes. His incompetence was secretly observed from other windows with a sense of shame. Not even the most frenzied of ideas could resist such a sacrifice. ‘Poor Anceis,’ said Polka, ‘when’s he going to write if he spends all day fighting with the stove?’ And one of the washerwomen asked, ‘What’s a man who can’t light a fire going to write anyway?’ There was more excitement when the Asphalt Man came. Now that was an unusual event. The tarmacking of the road to Grand Avenue. Years later, when I saw the Americans land on the moon, I recalled the Asphalt Man’s arrival in Castro. It was all very similar, but Castro happened first. He came in a white suit with diving goggles, wearing large, metal-soled boots, and we realised — you only had to see the faces — that each step he took was going down in history. He walked very slowly over the gravel, spraying tar with a sprinkler and hose. He was obviously very good since he barely stained his white suit. When he finished, he removed one of his large, leather gloves and went and shook Polka’s hand. I felt very proud. That, among all the inhabitants of the planet, the Asphalt Man should greet Polka.

My favourite, however, was the Poster Man. He’d arrive by bike. The roll of posters and long-handled brush on his back and the bucket with glue hanging off the handlebars. When he brought programmes, people would come from all around. That’s what he’d say with his rabbit’s smile, ‘I suppose you were hiding under the stones?’ The truth is it seemed not only living children turned up, but children from down through the ages. I swear there were lots I didn’t know, had never seen. So the programmes for Portazgo Cinema soon ran out. One day, when I was late, the Poster Man winked at me and said, ‘In the kingdom of heaven, my love, the last will be first.’ With that rabbit’s smile. Thin as a strand of spaghetti. Like the bicycle frame. And then he unfolded a poster, one of the big ones he stuck on the wall, and gave it to me. ‘Here, for being Polka’s daughter. Tell him it’s from Eirís.’ A poster for me! The Poster Man came on Thursdays to advertise the film for Saturday night and Sunday afternoon. So I had time to practise the film in the river.

Polka knew some pretty special people. Like the photographer with the wooden horse he called the champ of Galicia. One day, we were walking past the football stadium in Riazor and he greeted a man he said had also been champ of Galicia. ‘Look, O, Tasende, champion of Galicia in cross-country running. He’s now the owner of Riazor Stadium.’ ‘Don’t you believe your Daddy?’ asked the man with a smile. He then lifted two enormous rings with dozens of keys. ‘These are the keys to every door in the stadium.’

Polka was also friends with the writer. He taught him how to light the iron stove without his eyes watering. He took a blank piece of paper from the typewriter, lit it with his lighter and put it under the flue. The sheet went up in flames and all the smoke went after it, never to return. This was followed by the sound of typing and one of the washerwomen said to Olinda, ‘Poor writer, he’s happy now, punching keys.’

THE PHOSPHORESCENT DIVER and the crane operator were agreed that the most fascinating pieces of scenery were not those in view, but those at the bottom of the sea, and there was no greater happiness for a human being than the moment he felt like a fish again. A bodily form of happiness. ‘But the surface,’ said the diver, ‘can also be interesting.’

He gazed at Korea’s shaven head and started to make out countries where the blows had landed.

‘Give me a globe like this one and I’ll tell you I wasn’t here or here, the two places I haven’t been, and we’ll finish sooner. A friend of mine in the Merchant Navy I coincided with on the Viking used to write his name on the doors of toilets in dockside bars, “Carnocho I was here”. He went through life pretending he was a king from Mount Alto. Had I done the same, I’d be more famous than Captain Nemo, since I’ve travelled a fair bit more than Carnocho I. But I prefer to avoid the publicity. One night I was on board, on duty, I read a book called The Invisible Man from beginning to end. That’s an ideal state. Not normal or abnormal. Paranormal. A few years ago in South Africa, in Cape Town, I was walking down a long avenue, feeling exhausted, and was relieved to see a bench. The bench was perfect, in the right place, under a tree, for a quick snooze. When I went over to it, I found a large notice on the back. “Europeans Only”. Blasted bench. An abnormal bench. I circled it a few times. Paranormally. Should I or should I not sit down? Was my bum European? Only the blacks seemed normal. They walked as if they hadn’t seen us, the bench or me. They’d obviously decided they couldn’t sit down. I again circled the bench paranormally and found an inscription on the other side, “Carnocho I was here”. I’ve been to more ports than I can remember. I could relate many different adventures, sexual exploits and the rest, but the funniest thing that happened to me was in Korea.’

‘There’s a North and a South Korea,’ said Miguel.

‘Precisely. The captain explained that the city we were going to, Incheon, was in the south, but the port was on the border, right between the north and the south, on what they call the demarcation line.’ He pointed to a spot on Korea’s head and said, ‘Incheon must be here, right here. A line was painted on the ground. I was in a hurry to get out. As I disembarked, the captain said to me, “Stick to the line, don’t leave the line for any reason.” There were soldiers on both sides of the border, two rows facing each other. With me in the middle. You could hear the grinding of silent weapons. On board the ship, someone had said more than nine million people had died in the Korean War. That’s a lot of dead. I never thought there were so many. There was that comic book, Hazañas Bélicas , whose hero was an American called Sergeant Gorilla. He’d kill Koreans four at a time. I thought to myself, well, it must be true. All the dead on both sides seemed to be looking at me. I advanced slowly along the line, feeling dizzy, as if the line was in fact a tightrope. One false move on my part and a world war could break out. That’s when I understood what it is to be on the edge of the invisible. At one point, I froze. I couldn’t move forwards or backwards. The horror! How I would have liked to read on the ground: “Carnocho I, second engineer”, was here. But there was nothing. Just a line.’