Manuel Rivas - Books Burn Badly

With pleasure, he finally crosses the line he once drew for himself after the collapse of Nazism, that of taking shelter in the crypt of silence. In Spain, he finds his intellectual refuge and, to a large extent, living and triumphant, his model State. The stage on which to point to the defeat of parliamentary democracy. He is even able to take pleasure, when he meets cultivated reactionaries like D’Ors, in the rhetoric of an imaginary redoubt of the Holy Empire. Like his host, he emits not a word of self-criticism, not a hint of doubt or uncertainty. It is he who supplies his own best eulogy. Unlike his fiery predecessor, who is said sometimes to run out of control in his speeches, he talks slowly, enhances certain words to give way to that ‘power of presence’ described by Jünger. Makes use of liturgical gestures. ‘What was that he said?’ ‘A sacred feast.’ Yes, Carl Schmitt, Don Carlos, proclaims that this reunion with his Spanish friends is ‘a sacred feast in the winter of life’. At that moment, exactly at that moment, according to the testimony of the ecstatic Falangist writer Jesús Fueyo, ‘the lights went out’.

The press highlighted the event. Described the tribute to Carl Schmitt in large letters. Various media reproduced an interview first published in Arriba ‘on account of its great interest’, a euphemism, no doubt, for what was known as ‘obligatory insertion’. ‘It is possible that all European countries will have to justify themselves before Spain,’ said Schmitt. But no medium, no newspaper, reported the blackout. Nobody explained that, when the hierarch was pinning a badge to the chest of Don Carlos, the auditorium in the headquarters of the National Movement went dark. Completely dark.

From A Dramatic History of Culture by Héctor Ríos, unpublished.

HE FILLED HIS notebooks very quickly. He didn’t just like to write, he had a passion for calligraphy. Which later became a passion for stenography after he learnt the Martí method in Dr Montevideo’s version at Catia’s academy. He noted down his thoughts. Noted down what he was going to say. Both Chelo and the judge, for different reasons, were proud of this premature writer’s vocation. Chelo believed, rightly so, that it originated in those early lessons aimed at exorcising his fear of speech by means of graphic fluency and what she called ‘the hand’s sincerity’. She was pleased and deeply moved by the gifts of observation revealed by Gabriel’s writing, since she still thought of him as a child. The judge Samos had forgotten about the years of despair, that complicated period when Gabriel was so fragile, always on the verge of cracking, like a nativity figure. One day, he’d even used the word ‘defective’ a little carelessly. At a time when Gabriel’s stammer seemed to be getting worse. ‘Defective,’ he muttered, ‘a defective son’. In search of a word that sounded neutral, an ‘extenuating term’, he later claimed, he chose one that, even in a whisper, banged like a tin can.

‘You’re thinking about yourself,’ said Chelo. ‘You’re not thinking about him, you’re thinking about yourself.’

There was a hint of horror underlying his wife’s expression. She started muttering as well, in a sad tone, as if she’d picked the word ‘defective’ up off the floor and was trying to repair it.

‘What do you mean?’

‘You know very well what I mean. You’re thinking about what they’ll say. “Did you know the judge’s son has a stutter, Samos’ son can’t get his words out?” That’s what you’re thinking.’

‘Yes, that too. But most of all I’m thinking he can’t be a judge if he stutters. Had you thought about that? There are many things you can’t be in life if you’re tongue-tied. You can’t be a minister, or a general, or a bishop. . No, you can’t. You can’t command an army, or say Mass, or pronounce sentence. You can’t do the most important jobs in life. Right? You can’t be a notary, secretary at the town hall, a policeman, a radio presenter. You can’t even sing the lottery. Or commentate a goal.’

He suddenly felt well on this trip to the absurd. He was talking about getting tongue-tied while his was out enjoying a stroll down a shaded path.

‘You can’t even be a criminal. You can’t hold up a bank and trip over your tongue.’

He stopped talking when he noticed Chelo’s distorted face. A Cubist face on the verge of splintering. He didn’t often see her cry, show her emotions. He’d thought about this, her phlegmatic qualities. A serenity whose immutability sometimes disturbed him. She seemed to contemplate the world in a frame, which allowed her to walk with curiosity, too much self-control. Her oriental calm in the Chinese Pavilion, where the only dramatic moments came from the grooves of the vinyl record, that Austrian soprano singing Pamina’s amorous lament, Ach, ich fühl’s , a sadness that forced its way into his study, made itself heard, stopped him doing anything else, despite the volume being turned down at its source, next to Chelo’s quiet painting. This at least was the impression she gave when she thought she was alone and could be observed without her realising, that sweet, hypnotic movement of the brush. Perhaps all the drama coming from the vinyl grooves was meant for him. A personal matter with the Austrian soprano and her high notes. He took more comfort in the low ones. Actually he knew his sense of anxiety was proportional to the attraction he felt for this music. Now that he thought about it, he really liked it, though he couldn’t have called it a passion. Aside from Chelo, he did know people who were passionate about opera. Something to do with the sea. There was a time great companies performed here on their way to America. Ships, however, no longer transported bel canto. What to do? A melancholy vision of things. It had been neglected. They had to agree that musical culture in the city had grown less. He’d mentioned this to various authorities. It’s not just a question of trusting in the use of force and propaganda. A cultural vacuum is dangerous, etc., etc. But of course idiots abound. . He hadn’t said this, he’d kept it to himself. What he’d heard about the mayor. A spokesman for Friends of the Opera had gone to seek support for a festival and the mayor had replied with an intimidatory question, ‘How many friends are you? We’ll put you on a bus and. . off to La Scala in Milan!’

What to do?

Chelo’s face goes back to normal, but is somehow different. Her gaze has the unthinking hardness of someone who’s managed to prevent a collapse, there is no collapse, and makes Ricardo decide to back down. Everything in him changes. He reveals the greatest discomfort, that of someone who’s lost control.

‘Excuse me. I was half joking. It doesn’t matter anyway.’

‘Of course it doesn’t. Stop thinking about what can or cannot be and think about what is. Stop seeing it as a curse.’

Ricardo Samos was silent for a moment. The time it takes for a coin to be flipped in the air and land on the palm of the hand.

‘I see it like that. I can’t help it. As a curse. I want my son to be a judge one day. I’ve a right to want this. I want him to be the best. And yes, you’re right. Do you know what they’re saying? The look in their eyes when they ask, “How’s your son? Can it be helped? Did you know about the orator Demosthenes?” And they keep cracking jokes. “When the judge finally passed sentence, the defendant was already in the street.” And so on. The whole city cracking jokes.’

‘The whole city?’

‘Those who matter to us at least.’

He’d been sincere. Often, in his lectures, he’d defended the concept of Dignitas non moritur . According to this traditional viewpoint, having dignity meant wielding and handing down power. He wasn’t going to discuss this now, the underlying coincidence between medieval political theology and his thought, a victor’s thought, which made this unwritten law applicable. The old idea that ‘dignity does not die’ and is inherited, a justification of privilege, ‘corporation by succession’. But no. This was not the time to explain to Chelo what he thought and felt, there was probably no point.