Books Burn Badly (32 page)

‘OK. Now listen, Gabriel. Take the aspirin first and hold it in your mouth for a bit, without swallowing, so you get the taste. The bitter taste. Don’t spit. Good. That’s good. Now take a sip of coffee. Coffee’s also bitter. Bitterness on the palate is the best thing to get you talking. Sweetness is far too conformist. That’s it, my boy.

‘Now what you have to say is “acetylsalicylic acid”.’

Gabriel repeated it swiftly, perfectly.

‘Good, that’s good. Did you notice how the words contained what was spoken?’

Gabriel looked at Neves and O. They had large, wide open, beautiful eyes. He thought he’d like to be an ophthalmologist when he was older, as well as an underwater archaeologist. Be able to look into those eyes.

‘Ophthalmologist,’ he whispered, surprised that fear hadn’t climbed the walls of his throat.

‘What was that?’ asked Polka.

‘Ophthalmologist.’

‘That’s also valid,’ said Polka with satisfaction, seeing an improvement in Gabriel’s initiative. ‘It’s also scientific. Now let’s re-turn a few other re-turnables. As if we were singing, but without singing. Say, “The drunken accordion speaks English, German . . .”’

It was then the kitchen door suddenly opened. The judge was wearing his hat and overcoat, he hadn’t hung them up in the hallway as he usually did, which may have been why he looked bigger than the door. To Neves, the most nervous among them, he was like an enormous creature trying to enter a miniature house. The man with the sack of beans inside a bean. A cat, with whiskers as wide as the door, inside a mouse-hole. Behind his glasses, his eyes bespoke urgency. He glanced at Polka. A local. In his kitchen. The poor light at that time was like a continuation of a country storm.

‘And my wife?’

‘She received a call from Fine Arts, your honour. To take some foreigners on a tour,’ Neves replied nervously, but quickly, without slipping up. ‘She said if you called, you were not to worry. She’d be at the official dinner on time, just as you arranged.’

‘I see.’

Before leaving, he looked again at Polka. It was a fleeting, wordless glance. He was waiting for Polka to gesture to him in greeting with his corduroy peaked cap. For his part, Polka thought the opposite. That the initiative should come from the man in the hat. He was the owner of the house. The one who had to welcome him.

‘This is my father, your honour,’ said O.

‘Hello. How are we today?’

‘Same as always, your . . .’

He was going to add what he always said with friendly humour, ‘Working for eternity, making a bed for those who are going to sleep in the open.’ But he didn’t have time, he spoke like a mute, because the judge was already taking leave of his son. ‘Don’t forget your exercises.’ An admonition that, from the tone, appeared to be directed towards everyone.

Neves accompanied the judge to the door. Polka, meanwhile, poured himself some coffee, which he sugared generously.

‘But you’re . . . having . . . sugar!’ the boy protested.

Polka winked.

‘My words are re-turned already.’

‘Phew! I’m glad he didn’t ask anything,’ sighed Neves when she came back.

‘I’d have explained it all to him,’ said O. ‘We weren’t doing anything wrong.’

‘He’s very particular,’ commented Neves in a low voice. ‘When he gets all authoritative, there’s nothing to be done. He walks with his bust on a pedestal.’

Polka savoured the last drop of sugary coffee.
La dolce vita
, he called those dregs. A phrase he’d heard from Luís Terranova. What had happened to Terranova, to that boy who was a diamond, a Gardel? He hoped he hadn’t had dealings with eternity.

Polka savoured the last drop as if it were an undying pleasure and then clicked his tongue.

‘What was the problem? He looked at me and didn’t see me.’

He turned to face Gabriel.

‘Now you know. What you have to do is look and see. Give eyes their vision. Words their meaning. Come on. Let’s have another go. Say, “With each note he played, the bagpiper made a polished diamond”.’

Gabriel recited the sentence without getting stuck on the jingle. He didn’t choke on a single word. His voice sounded happy and singsong and the words contained everything they named.

‘That’s it. That’s what I call many happy re-turns,’ Polka congratulated himself. ‘You have to find the right key for the lock.’

He was emotional. He took Gabriel’s head in his hands as if he might lift it off his body and polish the sculpture. These were no sad verses, but the man’s eyes were wet. He heard Luís Terranova’s voice again. He was standing naked, a god in the nude, on top of Ara Solis. He mumbled that incomprehensible refrain
Yamba, yambo, yambambe!
as if it were Latin. Something Polka only did when he’d just killed a worm of fear.

The Witch’s Kiss

‘What? Isn’t anyone going to die? There’s no money to be made here!’

This is what Polka would say when he passed in front of the the Cuckoo’s Feather bar. His jokes as parish gravedigger encouraged people to carry on living. Sometimes he’d switch refrain and say at the door:

‘Anyone want a reference?’

And they’d shout to him from inside, ‘What death needs is an open mouth. Wine for you, Polka!’

This was something he could always count on. An invitation to a round of wine. He liked it this way. One thing he couldn’t stand was drinking on his own. There are lots of solitary drinkers. But Polka didn’t go in for this wine of solitude. Wine deserved a story, a conversation. Of the Here and the Hereafter, in people’s opinion, he knew more than the priest, who toed the official line. There were questions they didn’t discuss in the vicar’s presence, simply because he couldn’t answer them. For example: ‘Polka, tell us, who’s in charge of the Holy Company, the procession of the dead?’ ‘As I understand it, the one who sets the Holy Company in motion is the first to be buried.’ ‘And who’s the leader?’ ‘Why, Adam, I suppose.’ ‘And who buried Adam, Polka? Was it Eve?’ ‘No, it was a son, a third son who’s rarely talked about and must have been a good sort. Here Cain and Abel get all the attention. The third man must have wanted to avoid any publicity. But it was he, Seth, who buried his father. And stuck an olive branch in the ground over the first corpse. From that olive tree, they took the wood for the Holy Cross.’

‘That’s quite a coincidence, Polka.’

‘Life is like that, my friend, its vocation is to be a story. If you don’t understand that, you don’t understand anything. So I suppose it’s Adam, in order of antiquity, who calls to the others, “Arise, ye dead, and come out together!” Which seems to me an important detail. The fact they decide to come out together, without distinction.’

Polka to O: ‘Don’t be afraid of the dead. What you have to watch out for are the living who spoil life. Old people used to say those who hate life belong to the Bone Society. Sowing terror is both ancient and modern. What they used to do was throw a bone at night against a window they saw illuminated. Which was their way of indicating the victim. But the dead know how to get their own back. Something these thugs don’t realise. The dead find a way to defend themselves. Old people used to talk of a cold slap, which is a slap given by the dead who haven’t been properly buried. I know lots of examples. Lots of examples of murderers who were never judged. Or worse than that. Murderers who even now are meting out justice, making laws. But there were lots who got a dead man’s cold slap. Murderers who lost their mind. Like one who went around with Luís Huici’s fountain pen. Do you know who Huici was? One of the most cultivated, most stylish men this city ever had. A forerunner, a shining star. Well, his assassin would swagger into the bar with the dead man’s fountain pen. And one day he decided to write with it. But all he could write was Luís Huici’s signature. Luís Huici’s name. He died a little later from an illness. That’s what they said. But I knew what it was. He got a cold slap.’

‘Years ago, when I was small,’ said O, ‘I heard you say the dead in the Holy Company would sometimes take a black dog for a walk.’

‘That’s right. A black bitch with a little bell.’

‘Oh, come on! Did you ever see it?’

‘No, I didn’t see it,’ replied Polka, ‘but I heard the tinkle of the bell and scarpered. Listen, O, the only one from that world I had dealings with was Antaruxa.’

‘Get away with you!’ said Olinda, who to thread a needle in the poor light of the lamp concentrated so hard she involved all her muscles, the whole house, every concentric ring from the village to its antipodes, in such a way that, were she to fail said Olympic task, the pillars of the world would come crashing down.

Polka waited for the thread to pass through the eye of the needle. And then answered the question which was still hanging in the air, although Olinda had tried to swish it away with her hand.

‘Antaruxa is a high-ranking witch. She’s the one who kisses the devil.’

‘Be quiet, Francisco!’

When Olinda addressed him by his proper name, it meant she was serious. Very annoyed. And Olinda, annoyed, was no joke. The women of Castro knew how to put you in your place and assert their authority. So Olinda said, ‘Either you shut your mouth or I’ll sew it for you.’ To carry on talking, Polka moved off a little, sat on a stool and spoke from the shadows.

‘She smacks his behind!’ hissed Polka as if he’d revealed one of the greatest secrets of the night of spirits.

‘She smacks what?’ asked O.

Olinda reprimanded Polka with her look. They remained silent. The sea of trees, the dark purple waves of Zapateira Heath, roared. O wondered whether Olinda really would sew Polka’s mouth for him. Suddenly the two of them, husband and wife, burst out laughing.

‘She kisses his bottom,’ hissed Olinda. She was laughing as well.

Pinche’s Bike

Olinda said to Polka, ‘We have to buy Pinche a bike.’ For such a reticent person, this was quite something. A Biblical sentence. ‘If he’s going to work on site during the week and then, at the weekend, if he wants to go and play, he won’t manage.’ Pinche had taken up Polka’s bagpipes and was making something. Polka would say to the boy, ‘The good thing about this instrument is it already has the music inside.’ Polka looked at Olinda, who was waiting for his approval, and said, ‘You’re absolutely right. He’ll need a means of transport.’ This definitely sounded convincing, dispelled any doubts, because it cost a lot of money at that time to buy a bike, even if it was secondhand.

The point is Polka made that judgement about the means of transport and was himself convinced and very proud, as if the words had come from a decisive voice of Providence which had happened by. There weren’t many bikes around at that time and lest anyone should think it a senseless waste or a whim, careful what the neighbours might say, Pinche’s father declared:

‘It’s a means of transport!’

This argument, however, so pleasing to local ears, was touted about only when they’d bought it and were coming back, father and son, leading the conveyance by the handlebars. It was a kind of tribute to its owner, an old friend, another disaffected worker by the name of Estremil. His widow said of man and machine, ‘He liked to lead it by the hand. He rarely got on it, only on the flat, and, as you know, it’s not very flat round these parts. So it’s pretty new. He was very affectionate towards his things.’ And what could have been a compliment paid to the dead turned out to be a splendid truth when they were shown the workshop and saw the order and cleanliness that reigned there, together with the heavy mourning of tools that are without their operative.

‘Would you like to see his shoes?’

An unusual invitation, thought Polka, but who could refuse to see a dead man’s shoes? So the widow opened the door of a wooden shed and there, arranged on shelves, were his shoes and boots. Not four or five pairs, but all the pairs of a lifetime. The widow pointed to the clogs he wore as a child, his football boots, his wedding shoes, a present from a brother who worked for Senra Footwear. Every Sunday morning, Estremil would take out his shoes, line them up and polish and shine them. In silence, he’d travel back down the road of existence.

‘Would you like to see his radios? He painstakingly repaired half a dozen. I can’t sell them to you because away from here they don’t work. And his books? He had a thing about books. More than he could read.’

‘Objects have a homing instinct, madam,’ said Polka.

‘And they’re selfish too!’ replied the widow. ‘Careful with the bike, boy. He loved it like a sorrel mare.’

This was the image that stuck in Pinche’s mind. As soon as he took possession of the machine, he felt the tug of a tetchy, resentful animal.

Surrounded by a pack of children, they stopped in front of the Cuckoo’s Feather bar. In the face of night, in the burnt, smoky tavern light, the bike had an animal aura, a cervine air. The machine was waiting for some kind of communal recognition and people lent themselves to the task.

‘You need to keep the chain well oiled. ’Tis the vehicle’s soul.’

‘The frame’s heavy. It’ll be tough to ride uphill.’

‘What goes up must come down.’

‘Who d’you buy it from if you don’t mind me asking?’

And Polka let it out, ‘From Estremil de Laz.’ He realised too late. The information was inappropriate, then at least, and he tried unsuccessfully to correct his mistake, ‘I mean, from the bike’s widow.’ This is what happens when you trip on your tongue, you lose your sense of direction.

‘Wasn’t he run over as he was wheeling it along?’

The others eyed the bike with suspicion. Some of them moved off, partly as a joke. And Pinche and Polka were left alone.

‘You know what I think?’ asked Polka aloud. ‘You’re a bunch of fools!’

Enough said. For Polka, being a fool was the gravest insult to a man’s honour.

‘It’s just a bike,’ he said to Pinche. ‘Caress it, so it gets used to you.’