Books Burn Badly (8 page)

‘Maxim’ wasn’t bad, ‘Kid Kafka’ was unsettling, but he liked ‘The Corner’ best.

A gong sounded again inside 12 Panadeiras Street. It was louder this time. Came from deep inside the house. Cut straight through them. Like the cold. Like the moon.

‘A book at least,’ murmured Terranova, ‘would be something.’

‘You want a book?’ Curtis asked him. ‘You really want a book?’

Both of them had their hands in their pockets. Terranova’s feet were half off the kerb and he was leaning forwards. The same game that annoyed Curtis so much when he played it on the edge of the cliffs. His insistence on always walking along the edge, hanging out over the abyss.

He pretended to fall. Did a somersault. ‘Yes, I want a book!’

‘Come on then. I know where we can find some books.’

It was Christmas Eve 1931. They met no one on the way. The sea in Orzán redoubled its efforts when it saw them. Threw foam, drowned in its own roars. They were counting on this. On certain dates, the sea has a tendency to be vainglorious. The more witnesses there are, the more powerful the waves. They advance sideways against the wind. The water runs down their faces. They laugh and curse. In a corner of the Coiraza wall, which acts as a breakwater, the fashioned stone of the quarries is piled up with natural rocks. Kneeling down, with his back to the sea, Curtis moves a stone and puts his hand in the gap. He knows Flora has a store of
The Ideal Novel
in there. She goes there to sunbathe. And sometimes smokes what she calls an aromatic. These, she says, are her two square metres of paradise. The naked body revives in the open air. Here she reads her short novels. Keeps a stack of them under the stones.

‘
The Ideal Novel?
These aren’t books, they’re handkerchiefs. Look what’s here:
Sister Light in Hell
,
My Misfortune
,
Last Love
,
Decent Prostitutes
,
The Executioner’s Daughter
,
Nancy’s Tragedy
 . . .’

‘You can only pick one,’ says Curtis, impervious to his remarks. ‘They’re Flora’s. They’re OK. I like them.’

‘I’m not in the mood for crying. I already have to have dinner with my mother and an empty plate. What’s the son of the orphan’s father going to have for dinner? Cod.
Corpus meum
.’

‘Why don’t you tell her not to lay three places?’

‘She won’t listen. She goes crazy. You don’t know what she’s like. Poor Mummy Cauliflower! She’d accepted it. What does it matter whether he died in St John’s or here? But someone went and said something, and now she’s got this idea a dead man could have been stored in salt. If cod is stored in salt, why not a salted man? Some cod are as big as a man.’

Curtis stared at him in disbelief. Stretched out his arms to measure an imaginary leaf.

‘I’m not joking,’ said Terranova. ‘Some cod are like men.’

Water was pouring down his face. Not all of it from the sea. He took a sip. Spat it out. ‘I’ll take this one.
The Decline of the Gods
by Federica Montseny. Judging from the title, it’ll go against the world, be a little funny.’

That’s it. A ‘Casaritos’! The supervisor wouldn’t look at the book in the same way if it didn’t have that signature, the ex-libris of his name in artistic handwriting. He feels the excitement of having captured something of its owner. He feels that somewhere in Madrid, wherever he may be, Casares is aware two claws have just grabbed him by the lapels and are prising apart his weakened ribs. He examines the signature. He’s not an expert in calligraphy, but he can see the portrait of the man in it. His signature is really a drawing. With its angles and curves. The second ‘a’ of ‘Santiago’ and the first ‘a’ of ‘Casares’ are eyes. The most peculiar stroke is that linking the ‘g’ of ‘Santiago’ with the ‘C’ of ‘Casares’, as if the missing letter, the final ‘o’ of ‘Santiago’, had given its skein to join them. In this case, the second surname, ‘Quiroga’, is represented by the digraph ‘Qu’ and a full stop. Like this: ‘Santiagcasares Qu.’ There is a slanting line underneath, which rather than underlining his name, acts as a gently sloping ramp which the signature ascends.

Weren’t there any more?

Santiago Casares was known to have owned the city’s finest private library. 12 Panadeiras Street had two kinds of superimposed walls: the external wall and the internal bookshelves. Having inherited the library from his father, he received new publications from some of the best bookshops in Europe. Many such books arrived by sea. The supervisor remembered having read an interview in which Casares explained how sailors brought his father books by hand that were forbidden or unavailable in Spain. And how one of his happiest childhood memories was opening the packages ‘brought by the sea.’ He remembered that bit perfectly. He also knew something about packages brought by the sea.

‘Brought by the sea,’ he murmured.

‘What?’

‘More, there must be lots more.’

‘There’s a pile of them burning over there, in the main square. And a bunch were arrested and taken to the Palace of Justice. There are also some in the bullpen.’

The supervisor acknowledges his subordinate’s intention with a smile. Books as defendants, under arrest, against the wall. With their backs to people. In a line, squeezed tight, unable to move, in mute silence. They were the lucky ones. Days, months, years will go by and the arrested books will gradually disappear. A slip of the hand. A determined grip. Book by book, the dismantling of the library, what’s not burnt, in the Palace of Justice. And the same thing will happen to the man’s entire credentials. Everything will be the object of pillaging. Possessions great and small. Even little, intimate things. Not just his books, but the carved wooden shelves that hold them. The collections of the amateur scientist, the curious naturalist, have been carried off or destroyed. The lenses, measuring instruments, appliances for seeing what’s invisible. His herbaria and entomological boxes. All his effects, all his fingerprints. Here’s the last of the pillagers, one who was there in the beginning and returned as if to a wreckage. He’d already made off with a stack of books and optical instruments. This time all he found in the hallway, lying on the floor, was one of the entomological boxes containing labelled insects. What he saw were some repugnant bugs that looked like beetles. He kicked it away with disgust. Why weren’t there any large butterflies? He then went to what must have been the girls’ bedroom. There was a china doll. Broken. On the window sill, a dried starfish and some sea urchin skeletons. He decided to shake the skeletons and out fell some jet earrings. That was something at least. From the window, he could see the garden with a large lemon tree in the middle. The garden’s back wall formed a border. On the other side: sin city. The dividing walls of Papagaio. He looked carefully. Something was stuck to the wall, in among the weeds. Something black. Possibly a ball. But balls weren’t usually black. He went downstairs and descended the garden steps. Swore again. The ball was a strange, oval shape, glistening from the rain. A head. But a head that wasn’t a head. He picked it up. Made of wood. It looked like a head. Eyes, mouth, nose barely discernible in thin lines. And a hole as of a bullet. You never know. Perhaps it’s meant to be like this. It could be a sculpture. Something valuable. The Casares were fashionable people. À la mode. He’d take it. It wasn’t bad, the black woman’s head. Something at least. And as he pondered the mysterious value of things, he glanced at the entomological box and read
Coleoptera
. If they’re Coleoptera, maybe they’re not beetles. Who knows? There are some strange folk around. Someone might even pay for them. This one, for example. What’s it say?
Coccinella septempunctata
.

Another book fell next to the scaffold. He picks it up by the back. A little higher. By the neck. That’s life. He steps aside and again opens the book. The supervisor, still a young man, turns the page. Starts reading slowly as he paces around the fire. He may have found an unconscious discipline in reading, a comma or a full stop on the bottom of his boot. He suddenly stops, closes the book and holds it to his chest, in his left hand, like someone carrying a missal, while with his right hand he removes his spectacles, rubs his eyes with the back of his hand and blinks like someone emerging from a cinema. He takes the book and places it on a small pile away from the fires. ‘This one’s staying with me,’ he says. ‘Under house arrest!’

‘
On the Fertilisation of Orchids
 . . .’

One of them, the youngest, who to start with looked lazy, but gradually grew more enthusiastic, especially when he managed to repeat the impossible word, that abracadabra, to say ‘para-lle-le-pipeds’, which made him feel as happy as if he’d just vaulted a horse, three jumps in the air, after various unsuccessful attempts, is the one having fun reading out the titles. House arrest? He also has a peek at the pile of books the supervisor’s making.

‘
On the Fertilisation of Orchids by Insects!
By Charles Darwin.’

Parallelepiped sniffs three times as he reads. Fertilisation? Orchids? Insects? Something’s not quite right. Something bothers him. The idea of orchids being fertilised by insects.

‘That’s disgusting!’

He drops the book in the fire, fucking insects, orchid whores, spits and starts to move faster, using his jokes as a kind of manual lever.

‘
Quo vadis?
Straight for the flames! Another
Conquest of Bread!
How many
Conquests
is that?’

He lifts the book and shouts, ‘More bread! Make bread, ye baking women!’ He manages to attract a few sarcastic smiles. He then goes full out in search of a belly laugh, ‘If you’re not up the duff already!’ He chucks the book, which falls not like a parallelepiped, but like a concertina. A flame comes in search of this light being and he feels encouraged, as if there’s an understanding between them and the fire also likes his jokes. Where is everybody? Why isn’t there more of an audience? Has he got to organise the party
and
let off the fireworks?

‘What a lot of bread!
Germinal
, come on,
Germinal
! Spread your germs. Another
Germinal
in the pot.
The Ex-Men
by Gorky. You soon will be.
L’art et la révolte
by Fernand Pe-llou-ti-er. Well, I never, monsieur! Coruña Corsair Library. Corsair? Coarse air, more like. And what have we here?
New Bellies on Strike
, Sun Library. Bellies on strike? You mean not working!
The Numancia Rising as Told by One of Its Protagonists
, Coruña Workers Press. I’ve had about all I can take of that.
Does God Exist?
Aurora Library. No more questions, Aurora, darling! Victor Hugo,
Les Misérables
. Hell’s not miserable.
Madame Bovary
. One less ovary! What’s this?
O divino sainete
 . . . Boss, what do we do with this one?
The Divine Comedy
or something.’

‘
The Divine Sketch
is by Curros!’ said the supervisor without having to look, which impressed his subordinate.

The queries were few and far between. There wasn’t much selection. Books were unloaded in heaps or thrown haphazardly from boxes. When one did emerge from anonymity, like a face emerging from a common grave, the reading aloud of its title conferred on it a dying distinction, the ultimate proof that the title was actually a good one, since there was that cretin, in his own words, Parallelepiped, with certain pomp, asking about it. Here perhaps, unlike with others that gave rise to jokes, the allusion to the divine made his hands itch. Until that moment, he hadn’t paid a great deal of attention to the meaning of the titles, only to the humour in them. He hadn’t discriminated between them. So it was no surprise he should now think there was something strange in his having picked up one that spoke of ‘the divine’ alongside ‘sketch.’ The one that referred to God to ask if he existed shouldn’t be allowed to exist for another second. But this one,
The Divine Sketch
, suggested the idea of a superior laugh. And he liked to laugh. To laugh at danger as well. He had guts, you might even say he was hardened. Before the military uprising achieved its purpose, he’d been involved with a group of trained gunmen in acts of provocation aimed at destabilising the Republic. On one occasion, they’d broken up a meeting and someone had been shot. It took him some time to believe that he’d done it. And he never really accepted the fact. He’d been shocked. In his view, the amount of blood a wounded man can lose bore no relation to the simple act of pulling a trigger. After a few days, it became less important. Now it wasn’t important at all. Now even winning the war wasn’t enough. The idea of war itself had little to say. Things had advanced to another stage. Beyond war.

‘Manuel Curros Enríquez, that’s right.’

The Falangist, whom everyone now calls Parallelepiped, remembers why the name sounds familiar. The city’s largest sculpture is dedicated to Curros. He must have done something. In the gardens, surrounded by a lake. Very near there. He noticed it because on top of the monument is a naked woman rising triumphantly into the sky. Now that’s a monument. Were it not for the new Post Office, the woman could see the fires. Amazing what you can do with stone. Afterwards he’ll have to go and have another look. At the stone slut.

‘What? What shall I do with this one? Under house arrest?’

Curtis guessed that the authority of the man who decided the destiny of books derived not just from his position in the hierarchy, but from the fact he read a lot and was what is generally termed ‘a man of culture’. In fact, he didn’t stop reading and consulting books, some of them rescued from the flames. While his subordinates carried out the burning, egging each other on with jokes and directing insults at particularly obnoxious titles, their boss circulated. He went from group to group, issuing the same instruction under his breath, ‘Any copies of Scripture, in particular the New Testament, let me know at once.’

Now he frowns.