Books Burn Badly (56 page)

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by Héctor Ríos, unpublished.

The Compulsive Writer

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.

‘He may or may not become a judge,’ said Chelo, ‘but don’t talk to me about a curse ever again.’

This time, Ricardo Samos took notice. No, he wouldn’t use that word again. Besides, Gabriel’s difficulty with speech soon entered a new phase. Of rapid improvement, it seemed.

During a visit to Madrid, Grandpa Samos, who was then a high-ranking Navy legal officer, had tried to convince the judge that Gabriel’s problem was, in fact, the faltering expression of a sensitive and extremely gifted young boy. Ricardo didn’t pay much attention. He didn’t think his father an expert in such matters and, most of all, he couldn’t marry the idea of being extremely gifted with tripping over your tongue, being unable to express yourself, having such a terrible fear of words.

But when he heard the same thing from others he held in high esteem, such as Gueldo the judge, Fasco the prosecutor, Professor Sulfe and even Father Munio, his old fears gave way to this new idea that sooner or later there would be a change in Gabriel when all his aptitude came to the fore.

What worried Chelo, who’d assumed the task of seeking out and consulting specialists, was how little was known about speech impediments. The pedagogical vacuum. The lack of treatments. And, what shocked her more than anything, the little importance they were given compared to the suffering they caused those who experienced them.

During this search that lasted years, she reached the conclusion that her idea of painting souvenirs on Gabriel’s hands and making him practise his handwriting and drawing hadn’t been so wide of the mark. It was also important he should enjoy words. She’d cried with laughter the day she arrived home and Gabriel came running up to her from the grandfather clock, shouting the formula for aspirin, ‘Acetylsalicylic acid!’

Gabriel was getting better. He had periods of silence, when he withdrew into his shell, in a state of watchfulness, and appeared to be chewing over the whole of language.

He liked to read, would write things on his own initiative and put all his effort into practising his speech. This was beyond doubt. This was the best sign. His marks at school were excellent. He could spend days in almost total silence. This way, he avoided being laughed at and made fun of. The teachers knew this and didn’t try to force him to talk. A few attempts had been successful. Others had ended in disaster. Gabriel stuck on a syllable for minutes. His face red. With an absent look.

Until there was a sudden change. A miraculous U-turn. It was when he started writing compulsively. The same summer he asked to attend typing classes. He was amazed by the skill of a student a little older than him, who was dockside reporter for the evening
Expreso
. He could type very fast, without looking, using all his fingers. And, even more amazingly, he was learning shorthand. Gabriel also could take this step. Acquire a technique that allowed you to transcribe speech at a natural rhythm.

‘That’s magnificent, Gabriel,’ said Chelo. She was enthusiastic. ‘It’s a fantastic idea. Like drawing words.’

‘How was it you became friends?’ asked his father.

In the docks. Stringer is always down in the docks. Everyone calls him that, Stringer. He notes down the names of ships, where they’re coming from, their next destination, the cargo on board. He sometimes conducts interviews. The other day, a ship arrived from the Great Sole, carrying a smaller boat inside, a sailing boat they’d found drifting without a crew. On board were the papers of a Dutchman who lived in the States. He was a photographer and artist.

‘How do you know he was an artist?’

‘Because it said so on his documents. He had the same name as Uncle. Bastian. It’s a strange story. I was looking at his papers with Stringer, which said the voyage, the voyage he was making, was an art performance called
In Search of the Miraculous
.’

‘You’re talking very well, son,’ said Samos, beaming.

Chelo, with a look, warned her husband to be prudent. Changed subject.

‘You’ll go to that academy, Gabriel. It’s a fantastic idea. And we’ll get out the immortal machine that hasn’t been touched yet. Your father’s dormant Hispano-Olivetti, on which he was going to continue Cicero’s work.’

‘I’ve decided to do it by hand,’ said Samos, playing along. ‘The way classical authors did. What’s the name of that academy, Gabriel?’

‘The Tachygraphic Rose. There’s only one teacher.’

‘Only one teacher?’

‘Yes. I had a go with Stringer. And she positioned my fingers on the keys to teach me how to start. Her name’s Catia. Catia’s the one who positions your fingers on the keys so you can start. Each finger has its own keys. And the thumbs are for using the space-bar.’

He could hear Catia whispering instructions from behind him, close to his neck, like a breeze, ‘Head and back straight. Elbows next to your body, like this. Try and keep your arms at right angles.’

‘I’ve been practising,’ he said, smiling, his eyes closed, his fingers pressing down on imaginary keys. ‘I can find all the letters in the air from memory.’

The iron Hispano-Olivetti on its trolley occupied a central position in the alcove. The typewriter, its actions and constructive sound, implicated the whole area. It was the closest thing to making books. Now was not the time for calligraphy, imitating styles, English or Italian, decorating capital letters in the green light of the lamp, though, when his father had visitors and Gabriel couldn’t move, he’d go back to handwriting. Almost always, he’d write a postcard dated 1913 to Santiago Casares c/o Durtol Sanatorium, telling him how he was solving his problems using an infallible technique, that of combining writing and speech.

His cabinet of curiosities, however, was relegated to a second level. Now, despite their value and meaning, they were more archaeological remains than anything. The typewriter was too big, too out of scale, and pulled him away from childhood, quickly through adolescence, to the doors of another age. That of secret, personal writing.

Eventually Neves, who was worried, decided to bring it up with Chelo. Gabriel had balls of paper in the pockets of his coat, jacket, trousers. He used to keep his notebooks tidy. Now he filled notebooks not only from school, but of different sizes. This may not have mattered. But sometimes, in the morning, his room would be full of loose sheets of paper covered in strange signs, as well as balls of paper, spherical forms that overflowed the wastepaper basket. Gabriel would rush out in the morning. If she’d come to have a word with Chelo, it wasn’t to stick her nose into other people’s business. She wasn’t a meddler. Besides, she wouldn’t have been able to understand anything even if she’d wanted to. They were scrawls. Unintelligible. She’d come because it seemed to her that Gabriel often didn’t sleep at night. When she got up early, she noticed a crack of light under his door. All night with scrawls, shorthand or whatever they called it, couldn’t be good.

‘What are you writing?’ his mother asked him that evening. With a smile, as if by chance. Without wanting to disturb him, without a hint of suspicion. (He’s little; the door opens and it’s her in a black felt hat with a white tulle veil almost covering her eyes; she bends down with open arms and he doesn’t know whether to stay still or run towards her, crouching down with open arms:
doucement
,
doucement
; now he’s the one wearing an invisible veil.)