Manuel Rivas - Books Burn Badly

He moved Miguel’s head like a globe, ‘Here you can’t see the line so well.’

The phosphorescent diver is very impressed by the underwater rifle Manlle bought for Zonzo on his travels. ‘Blimey, this could kill someone!’

ALL OLINDA REMEMBERED was my name. That’s a lot if you’re the one being named. Of all the names, the thousands of words, the only sound that comes out of her mouth (because she doesn’t complain, sob, groan or moan) is your name. What’s that? And she says your name. Like a stone figure suddenly calling out for you. She rounds her lips. Draws your name. That’s a lot of weight. Like carrying someone on top of you. Not inside or around, but on top of you. Only your name. She could have said anything. She could have howled. I’d have understood that, a howl rising from deep inside her. But no. She says your, my name. All she gives out is my name. A wee-wee, a slight trickle. Droppings, chestnuts, quails’ eggs, balls that get harder and smaller, like the pips of watermelons or morello cherries. Pips of life. You feel like planting them to see if they’ll grow like seeds. Putting them in damp cotton. They might just sprout. Lentils. Finally a few jewels, precious, shiny droppings like ladybirds. Spit, no. All that comes out of her mouth is my name. She eats a beakful, the amount a bird gives to its chick. That’s enough. She shrank. Withered. I could lift her in my arms like a baby. ‘There we go! When you’re better, we’ll count matches. We’ll fill box after box with matches.’ I found her lying on the carpet, bent double, just another geometrical drawing. ‘Leave me here,’ said Olinda on the carpet. ‘I’m popping out for a while.’ This was the last thing she said with any of the old, coherent meaning. After that, only my name. O. She’d say O and I’d use the O to give her something. She keeps going on a beakful. The line of her body. Wee-wee. Jewels. Seed. My name. A circle on her lips, a sigh. So it’s true she, what she was at least, left that day on the carpet.

‘WHAT IF YOU lose an eye in one of those fights?’ asked the engineer Roque Gantes from the deck.

‘If I lose an eye,’ replied Korea ironically, ‘then they’ll have to pay for it.’

‘Why do you fight over neighbourhoods, between Mau Mau and Red Devils?’

‘Why? You don’t ask why.’

‘You’re an idiot. An idiot, gentlemen, an idiot!’ shouted the crane operator.

‘If I lose an eye,’ continued Korea, ‘they’ll have to cough up for it. You bet they will.’

‘Ten thousand pesetas,’ said Gabriel suddenly.

‘You sure about that, judge?’

Korea thought about Medusa with her red tights.

‘And if a relative does the damage, your father, for instance, how much?’

‘Nothing.’

Everyone was talking about a boy who’d been kidnapped in the city. Pepito Mendoza. A crazy woman who’d wanted a child of her own had taken him.

‘Hey, judge, how much they pay for a slave?’ Korea asked Gabriel.

‘For cotton, in Virginia and those parts, three hundred and sixty dollars per head.’

Pinche became thoughtful. In Ovos Square and Santa Catarina, you could change dollars, pounds, pesos, bolivars. In secret. Under the eggs.

‘How much is three hundred and sixty dollars?’ asked Pinche absent-mindedly.

‘You wouldn’t fetch that much,’ said Korea, ‘if that’s what you mean. Besides, you’re boss-eyed. That lowers the price. You couldn’t even fight.’

Pinche did not reply. He had two eyes. Trouble is one of them was lazy and they were using a patch to correct it. If the guy in white shoes caught him for making a fire with planks of teakwood to warm twenty-five workmen’s pots, he really might take out his good eye. But he wasn’t going to catch him. Despite having a lazy eye, he could see much better than Korea. Which is why he was the first to sound the alert and start running:

‘Mau Mau!’

‘WE WERE GOING to the festivities on the 2nd of August. First by special train to Betanzos, from Coruña Station, then by boat up the River Mandeo to Caneiros Field. We’d spent ages preparing for it. This festive journey, this trip on boats with laurel awnings, swaying in time to the accordions, propelled by bagpipe airs, was like going to a place you’d dreamt of. So many turns and there it was, Libertaria. A day like that was worth a year. With a bit of luck, you’d set off empty-handed and come back in an embrace.’

Polka stood up and went in search of Man and the Earth , Volume I, by Élisée Reclus. With this book in his hand, Polka adopted the look of someone serious. The look of Élisée Reclus. Not that he couldn’t be serious without this book. But in this case, he’d say, his seriousness was well documented. It took a lot of effort to convince him to go to the eye doctor, as he called the ophthalmologist. He hated admitting physical failure. They then spent hours talking. The doctor told him he had presbyopia, which is why little words vanished on the page. Polka then listed the seven deadly sins. The ministers, he said, in the government of Carnival. The doctor was still a child, but he remembered the costumes on Cantóns. It had been a special Carnival, the best, following the elections in February 1936. Processions came with bands of musicians from every single neighbourhood. The child’s eyesight may have magnified the memory. Perhaps. It was the last great Carnival. After that came war, prohibition.

Yes, he remembered them well. The Ministers of Pride, Covetousness, Lust, Envy, Gluttony, Anger and Sloth. The sins were all very stylish, wearing frock coats and top hats, each with a big cigar and ceremonial staff. Arm in arm with them, in very short, low-cut Charleston dresses embroidered with bugles and beads, with cigarette holders and boyish haircuts, came the virtues, the girls from Germinal, the eye doctor, though only a child, had a good look at them, at Humility, Charity, Chastity, Kindness, Temperance, Patience and Diligence. Diligence struck him as particularly beautiful. What he didn’t know, said Polka, is that there was an eighth sin. Presbyopia.

Polka put on his presbyopics and, before turning and becoming really serious, made a gesture he learnt from Pepe Pazos, a sailor who was caught by the revolution of October 1917 in the port of St Petersburg and saw the Aurora fire cannon shots at the Winter Palace, who was also in Madrid in July 1936 — a sailor! — and asked, ‘Where are you going?’ ‘To Montana.’ ‘What for?’ ‘To storm the barracks.’ ‘OK then.’ Pazos, who was an expert in icebergs for the convoys that went to the Arctic during the Second World War. Pazos, who steered a support ship during the Normandy Landings. Well, this Pazos, before talking, made a humble gesture that Polka imitated, ‘What can I tell you that will be lasting?’

Polka had gone off in search of Volume I of Man and the Earth by Élisée Reclus because it contained a key to what he wanted to say, to what that trip upriver, the festivities of that year, actually meant. But, as so often happened, he forgot what he was looking for and ended up staring at a globe in the book held by two hands. If he looked over his presbyopics, the globe moved, became hazy like a strange being. Through his glasses, it became crystal clear, in its place. He wasn’t quite sure how he preferred it, whether crystal clear or blurred.

‘You were going to read me something, Papa,’ said O.

Unlike his natural state, Polka’s seriousness was very dramatic. ‘You’ve got to leave, girl. As soon as possible. Without delay. Before the years trap you and nothing changes. Everything here smells musty. The air. Time itself.’