Manuel Rivas - Books Burn Badly

‘Who goes there?’

‘Sada, the drunken boat!’

He’d paint feverishly for periods he alternated with moments of complete absorption, in which he appeared to be gripped by mute silence. During one of these moments, he abruptly broke his silence and said to Héctor, ‘You know? I’m painting the Azor with toxic paints, with lots of emerald green. It might even work.’

‘Will it take long?’

‘What does time matter? Didn’t you hear what Carrero Blanco, his second-in-command, said, “Franco’s mandate is for life!” We need to let the arsenic trioxide do its job.’

‘Don’t torture yourself.’

‘Who ever got me to do magic realism? Shame I’m not a Cubist. You know what the Capitellum asked me? “Say, Lugrís, how do you paint those urchins?” That’s what he asked me. “First I make room for them, your excellency, and then they grow alone, somewhere between the colour of stone and Patinir’s blue.”

‘“Alone?”

‘“With cobalts and by the grace of God, your excellency.” I projected my voice, like Dalí. You can’t be too careful.’

‘You did well,’ replied Ríos. ‘People like that are susceptible to small insults. It’s the big ones they don’t notice.’

When the painter had finished, Héctor Ríos thought the four walls had disappeared. ‘Here you’ll hold out like Nemo,’ said Sada. Adding, ‘All you need is a waterbed.’

‘Are you sure there is such a bed?’

‘There was one in the Persians’ paradise. Made of goatskin. They filled it daily with solar water.’

‘That’s the direction the science of the future should take in this wretched country,’ commented Ríos, who was always inspired by Sada’s ideographic speech. ‘Technique with style. Mould dryers, boxes of light, waterbeds. Our poetry reveals, to those who can read, a lack of material resources. This permanent invocation of light is nature’s simplest movement. Mystical obsession is the result of an absence of heating, a poor diet and sleeping badly.’

‘Leaving paradise aside,’ said Sada, ‘I’m quite sure the great Verne sailed, so to speak, on one of those waterbeds Dr William Hooper invented during the last century. A belief that goes with the dates. I always thought Hooper was an invention of my father’s. But this phenomenon of floating medicine really existed. As confirmed by the British consulate. Here’s the address. The London Waterbed Company, 99 Crawford Street.’

‘If you can get me a waterbed,’ replied Montevideo, ‘I’ll write you a shortcut to Parnassus, an obituary in life that’ll have necrophiliacs leaping for joy. You’ll be immortal for twenty-five years at least.’

‘Don’t forget to include my sublime nickname, bateau ivre , in your obituary. Even if my first name, Urbano, sounds like a mode of transport.’

‘Now sit down for a bit,’ said Montevideo.

‘Are you going to torment me?’

‘Yep. I’m going to read you a fragment of present recalled.’

HE WAS THE man who wanted to say no. Leica went to Rubén Lires, the cellist, for advice. But found someone else who didn’t dare fill in the crossword. There he was, lost in thought, playing a sleepwalker’s tune. The net had reached here also. On San Andrés Street, a group of workmen carried a large carpet from the Jesuits’ church, which had been rolled up and lent for the state banquet. The bow sought a note of pain and fury on the strings, but the arm was disarmed. And fell.

‘I’m going to have to play at the state banquet.’

The time for excuses had passed. Rubén had found protection, an underwater capsule, in music. Now his mastery had made him vulnerable. Visible. He wished he could be a travelling musician, one of those faceless musicians who congregate in Tacita de Plata and wait for village envoys and owners of dance halls. He wished he could be Papagaio’s blind accordionist. He wished he could go back, all the notes return to nothing. Who’d been damn kind enough to think of him? Every year, the local authorities put on a state banquet for the Caudillo. This was followed by a session of classical music with chamber groups and select soloists. At what point, why, how, was his name mentioned? Who dropped it into the conversation? Who loved him so badly to do him such a favour? The praise, the applause, to him was a kind of conspiracy. No, he wouldn’t be able to play. In that world, he considered his art a crime. He should be in prison. Under house arrest. Who was the music-loving provost, the flower-eating swine who thought of him? It was a mark of distinction, an honour, that a local artist would for the first time replace an established maestro at the reception. Rubén Lires spent the night writing anonymous notes about Rubén Lires the cellist. About himself. He ripped them up, they were so precise they were comical, like those pre-communion confessions as a child: ‘I had impure thoughts.’ ‘Did you now?’ ‘Rubén Lires, the cellist, is disaffected. Rubén the Jew. Rubén the Mason. Rubén the Communist.’ He crossed this out, corrected it: ‘Rubén the Trotskyite’. They won’t understand that, better to put ‘Rubén the Anarchist’. They know what that is. ‘Rubén Lires is a degenerate artist.’ That’s it! Denouncing yourself also required a certain style. Then he thought of something more precise that really would set the cat among the pigeons: ‘Despite appearances to the contrary, this man leads a dissolute life. He has no moral stamina, is subject to every vice. He is anti-Spanish, a revolutionary and a freethinker. We were quite surprised to see his name in the programme for this year’s state banquet. Signed: an alert patriot. Long live Franco! Spain for ever!’

‘What do you reckon? Do you think it’ll work?’

He felt Leica’s silence. The reason his photographer friend didn’t say anything was that he was undergoing a similar trial. That of the man who can’t say no. The Judge of Oklahoma talked to the provincial chief, the provincial chief talked to the governor, the governor to the Minister, the Minister to someone in His Excellency’s household. ‘There’ll be photos. A photographic session with the Head of State. And who knows? Perhaps the new Official Portrait. Can you imagine? On all the walls of ministries, thousands of offices, official centres, schools, books. Triumph. Guess who the photographer’s going to be, who’ll have the honour.’

‘I could always say my mother died. They might not ask me when. I’ll say, “Listen, my mother died, I can’t attend the state banquet.” And that’s it. She won’t mind. She is dead, after all. And she always protected me. I can take her flowers. “See, Mum. I should have been playing for all those bigwigs, but I’m here instead, with my own.”’

Rubén was distracted while he spoke. Next to the cello, he looked like a helpless child.

‘I’ll say I’m ill,’ said the cellist suddenly, as if he’d finally hit on the right saving idea. ‘The truth is I don’t feel up to much. They’ll hear the creaking of my bones, the rumbling of my intestines.’

He gazed at the instrument, which was ill as well. Today it resembled a hive that’s been abandoned by the swarm. The cello, through its strings, gave him a bee’s empty look.

‘I’ve arthritis as well,’ he added with a touch of glee. ‘In my left arm. It sends my first and fourth fingers to sleep. These two.’

‘I’m not sure that excuse will work, Rubén,’ said Leica sceptically. He felt he should try to cheer him up, which was a way of addressing his own situation. The dilemma they were in, though Rubén knew nothing about the Great Portrait, wasn’t so bad. They were just two professionals doing their job. Worse, he thought, they were scientists devising increasingly destructive weapons. What was Rubén going to do? Play the cello. That’s all.