Books Burn Badly (40 page)

‘There’s one priority for which we need all languages. We have to talk about the League of Human Rights.’

Samos was unhappy about the boarding-house. Perhaps because he was a freshman, he’d been given a small, dark room with damp patches on the ceiling. He still hadn’t decided whether he was going to fulfil his promise to his mother to attend first Mass in the cathedral the next morning.

‘Why’s that?’

When he got enthusiastic, Héctor had a tendency to construct paragraphs. ‘The only way to oppose totalitarianism is to aim for a World Federation governed by just principles of universal law. These human rights, without borders, will be the framework for a common language, the real Esperanto.’

They’d known each other as children. They were neighbours in the Old City. Playing on the beach. They can’t see. It’s a game of gangsters in the Wild West. You have to crouch down, move stealthily and find your enemy without being seen. You shoot with your mouth.

‘Bang, Ríos!’

‘Where am I then?’

‘What you say about the League of Human Rights sounds Masonic,’ Samos blurted out. His mother had said his voice was finally dropping and he’d have sworn it happened on that day, at that moment.

Héctor felt the blow. Was confused. Samos’ voice, which sounded so different, may have had something to do with it.

‘Masonic? Is that good or bad?’

Samos preferred not to reply. He emphasised his silence. He knew this silence was the sign of a definitive parting of the ways. Months later, he’d come into contact with those at
Acción Española
. In the Law Faculty, there was also a very active group of traditionalist teachers openly conspiring against the Republic.

‘Now you’ve a voice of thunder. You’d be terrific playing the part of the Last Martian. Remember? Instead of Regent’s Park, we’ll choose Mount Alto, next to Hercules Lighthouse. That superhuman note. Ulla, ulla!’

They laughed.

‘Ulla, ulla, ulla!’

It was burning. The flames were licking at the cover. The books had been released by the blasted time machine. He hears a voice. That guy who’s taken to reading out the titles and their authors on the pyres by the docks.

‘Wells!’

He turns towards him.

‘Wells, Wells!’

Though he looks at him seriously, the guy is smiling, ‘He certainly wrote a lot!’ He’s holding a third book in his hand. Why does he have to try and be funny? Why is he imitating a dog’s bark?

‘Wells, Wells, Wells!’

The books are burning. Ricardo Samos is about to raise his arm, mumble something. He coughs. His body bends over. The young Parallelepiped approaches with concern, dumb camaraderie. ‘Is anything wrong, boss? It’s all this horrible smoke. Why don’t you go down to the beach for a breath of fresh air? Or drink some coffee.’

‘I’m fine,’ says Samos to Tomás Dez. ‘Don’t worry.’

‘Coffee. With lots of sugar. It’s the best thing for stress.’

There was a secret person inside Sulfe. It was well known he was a loner. And single. ‘Celibate, you mean,’ his father would say. ‘Married to his books.’ Not any old books. His motto was, ‘He who alights on the classics’. Gabriel had heard his father say this several times and always solemnly. Now he knew the phrase came from Alfonso Sulfe and was peculiar to him.

‘I’ve nothing to hand, Gabriel, but I’m going to give you a word for your cabinet of curiosities. Take note. OK. Are you ready? The word is “colophon”. An example: “The book had no colophon”. In this case, it refers to the final notes, and this is its general meaning. “Colophon” is the end of something. But the strange thing is where it comes from. It’s connected with the life of a Greek fortune-teller called Calchas. An important person in the history of war, which is to say in history. It was he who invented the greatest trick this world has ever seen, the Trojan horse. But he had to cope with a terrible prophecy. That he would die when he met a more powerful fortune-teller. And that’s exactly what happened in a place called Colophon.’

‘What did the other foretell?’

‘We don’t know.’

Gabriel thought it would make an interesting story for a postcard from Durtol Sanatorium.

‘Do you like reading? It’s the best thing that can happen to you in life. Writing has other implications. Another word, my favourite. “Scruple”. From
scrupulus
. This was the name for a small, pointed stone. It could also be used as a bargaining chip. But then came the meaning you’re already familiar with. Rather than knowing what a scruple is, you feel it, don’t you?
Injeci scrupulum homini.
I put a scruple in the man, I put him in a quandary. Funny. It’s still a sharp, pointed stone. The difference now is it’s inside the body. What’s yours? A word you like. Come on. Quickly.’

Gabriel wondered whether or not to say his word. The man seemed kind enough and, whenever he said it, he felt the pleasure of someone playing a prank on a sage.

‘“Acetylsalicylic”, sir.’

‘Not bad.’

Samos the judge would occasionally refer to Alfonso Sulfe as one of the most talented men in the country. Shame he shut himself up so much in his hole. He clearly enjoyed the other’s etymological expeditions. ‘Sulfe, tell us the origin of the word “jacket”.’ His friend’s wisdom was thus put on show during conversations in the Crypt. To start with, Alfonso Sulfe would blush, but then he’d succumb to a few minutes of glory.

‘We could say the word “jacket” comes from the Road to Santiago. St Jacques in France. There’s the germ of the word. Jacques. There were so many peasants who had this name it became a generic term for a local and the article of clothing he wore. In that way . . .’

‘Did you know that, Don Munio?’

‘No. Another miracle performed by the Apostle.’

Apart from that, Alfonso Sulfe barely intervened in the conversation when it had to do with ‘the current state of affairs’, meaning politics. He’d been friends with the judge for a long time, ever since the 1940s. The 1940s! He talked of those years as of a distant age, with dark melancholy. Now a colleague from that period had reappeared. They met in Santiago at a tribute to Álvaro D’Ors and discussed renewing lost ties. The judge invited him to the Crypt. Sulfe was grateful, but couldn’t. As well as his lectures, he was stuck in the belly of a medieval whale, he said enigmatically.

‘Are there any Bibles in that whale?’ asked Samos. A game of allusions. Alfonso Sulfe exerted a kind of esoteric influence on him. The first person he knew who’d studied in detail the Coruña Bible, now known as the Kennicott Bible, kept in the Bodleian Library in Oxford. Sulfe had been there in 1935 and he described it as if he’d impressed a copy of that treasure on his memory. The Sephardi script, the colourful illustrations in burnished gold and silver leaf, the strange morocco goatskin box binding, blind-embossed on all six sides. Yes, he could see it now. One of the unforgettable illustrations showed the moment Jonah was swallowed by a whale. And you simply had to see that of the astrologer Balaam consulting an astrolabe. This miniature alone was worth a civilisation. Samos had asked a question Sulfe found a little naive. How had they let such a treasure get away? The Bible was made in 1476, Sulfe explained, shortly before the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492. Samos should not forget the Coruña Bible was commissioned by a Jewish family and illuminated by a very talented Coruñan Jew, Joseph Ibn Hayyim. ‘I don’t mean that, I mean the book,’ said Samos. ‘Shame such a treasure got away.’

He was surprised by Sulfe’s call the day after the tribute to D’Ors. Jonah’s whale would let him out of house arrest in the case of such a stimulating proposal. He’d be there. Samos was pleased about this re-encounter. They’d shared an interest in Lusitania and for the poet Teixeira de Pascoaes, though one day they’d had a lively disagreement on the subject of
saudade
or longing. The judge had even raised his voice and got quite angry. He’d kept using the word
outrage
. ‘An outrage, Sulfe. Teixeira’s proposal to declare a metaphysical concept such as
saudade
a tenet of the New State. A State is something very serious. You’re not a jurist, so you can’t know. Without wishing to boast, I’d say there’s a moment for the soldier and a moment for the jurist. An act of victory has to be translated into law. But what’s
saudade?
It has no juridical worth. You can’t sustain a State with a wooden sword.’

‘A wooden sword?’

‘Yes, all that about
saudade
is a wooden sword for floral games.’

‘And when they talk about the grace of God? Caudillo by the grace of God? The New State as
creatio a Deo?
’

The judge glanced in amazement at the others who were present.

‘Such a comparison is improper,’ said Samos. ‘Between God and
saudade
.’

‘Of course it is. Floral games! Like that, on its own, doesn’t it sound funny?’ asked Sulfe, adopting a conciliatory tone. ‘So too does the grace of God.’

And they all laughed with jovial relief.

Alfonso Sulfe stayed behind. He clearly wanted to see Ricardo Samos on his own. Not quite on his own. Gabriel was there, in the alcove, camouflaged in a green skin from the desk-lamp, as he liked to think, and focused on the text from Durtol Château Sanatorium. It described New Year’s Eve, 1913. How much he missed his family. It also said how much he’d weighed that day, though in his case he’d used data from the Toledo-Ohio scales in Villar the chemist’s.

‘Dear Samos, I wanted to ask you for a special favour.’

‘What is it, Sulfe?’

‘At university, shortly after the war, you mentioned some very interesting books that had come your way by a stroke of fate.’

Ricardo Samos raised his guard. The tension of being with an acquaintance who you fear is about to commit an act of folly. Not a simple slip-up, but a grave mistake.

‘One of those books was called
Le Nu de Rabelais
 . . .’

‘What?’

‘
Le Nu de Rabelais
. In French. Highly illustrated. Drawings and photographs of extraordinary erotic grace . . .’

‘No, I don’t have that book.’

Sulfe didn’t seem to register the negative. He rubbed his hands together and his eyes gleamed. ‘You’ll wonder why I’m bringing this up after so many years,’ he said. ‘It was, for me, a very special night of friendship. The evening before the trip to Paris, Milan and Berlin. There was something that separated us from the rest of the group. A passion for books. You then had the kindness to share a secret.’

Samos had remained rigidly silent, but at this point he interrupted the story with coldness, ‘I don’t have it. Are there any other books you’d like to see?’

‘I understand if, for you, this meeting has been lost in the mists of time, but it’s still very fresh for me, for reasons I will explain. I’m immersed in a study that began with the paschal laughter of the Middle Ages.
Risus paschalis
. After that, I moved on to a second world we could call the rituals of laughter. The
festa stultorum
, Mardi gras . . . When something becomes an obsession, you never know where it’s going to lead. It’ll sound absurd, even puerile, Samos, but I can’t stop thinking about that book . . .’

He was about to add, Of naked queens riding donkeys and rams, dragonfly women in a sacred grove, siren women in Lusignan, playful, warrior women armed with sensual spears, parodying war through amorous combat. Silenus advances in the vanguard of Bacchus’ army. Wine from bars in Franco Street and Algalia had undone locks, loosened their tongues. He could recall Samos’ words as he savoured his treasures, the fruits, he himself had admitted, of pillage.

He said, ‘I’m on Rabelais, in the sixteenth century, immersed in a feast of words. This is something of what I’ve discovered in the belly of that whale. And the more I rummage through its entrails, the more I think about that unknown book with its pioneering photographs.’

‘Whoever told you about that book must have been very passionate, very convincing. But it wasn’t me, Sulfe.’

‘Don’t you remember anything?’ asked the professor in dismay.

‘
Le Nu de Rabelais?
Is there such a book? I haven’t the faintest.’ Samos’ voice was hard, cutting. ‘It’s the first I’ve heard of it. You’re mistaken, Sulfe. Completely and utterly. You’ve got the wrong man, the wrong night. And if I did share a secret, something I don’t recall, I trust you’ll know how to keep it.’

It was his father’s reply, the sudden change of tone, that alerted Gabriel. He looked at them without changing position. The intimate smoke of convivial jokes hadn’t entirely dissipated. For a time, the atmosphere was the same and reminded him of a cartoon. Balloons hanging in the air, containing words and thoughts.

‘That must be it, a mistake. It was so long ago. I’m sorry to have bothered you,’ said Alfonso Sulfe tentatively, surprised by Samos’ response. ‘It’s turned into an obsession. The others don’t realise how important it is. But you know what happens with obsessions. You end up like Captain Ahab chasing Moby Dick.’

He stared at him. ‘
Moby Dick
must be around here somewhere.
Benito Cereno
too. But not your whale, Sulfe. None of the books you’ve mentioned.’

He stood up so that Alfonso Sulfe had no choice but to do the same. Sulfe glanced at the dark corners, richly bound lands, of the walls. Gabriel sensed his agitation. He had no doubt the professor would have liked to leapfrog the judge and scour those bookshelves. In silence and at a distance, he somehow shared their tension, participated in their duel. It might be said he knew more than either of them, like someone watching a game of cards who’s seen the players’ hands. But he held his breath. Were his father to pay him attention or Sulfe to look in his direction, he’d have to abandon the battlefield.

‘At least clarify one thing for me, Samos. Didn’t you have a first edition of
The Prohibited?
’