Books Burn Badly (36 page)

‘All this in confidence, right, your honour? Strictly between ourselves.’

‘One day, you’ll have to invite me to your sanctuary, Ren.’

One day. One day he’d have to extend an invitation. ‘It’s all a mess. You can imagine what it’s like living on your own.’

‘You know what the Portuguese say? “Desire of solitude leads to great virtue or wickedness.”’

‘All my vice is taken up with eating.’

Samos was clearly talking through one side of his mouth, but thinking something different. He’d grabbed the mallet. And was thumping the palm of his hand.

‘Thanks for the Bible, Ren. A good price too.’

Yeah. Thumping away at the palm of his hand.

He asked, ‘Any other news?’

Beating the palm of his hand. Looking elsewhere. At the mystery of the leather bag.

‘I’d tell you, Samos, if there were.’

‘Nothing about the valiente of Finisterra?’

‘Nothing, your honour. I’ve done all I could. Been through all the lists. The Falange. The knights militia. Those who transferred Casares Quiroga’s library. Those posted to his house. Those at the docks and in María Pita. The squad of workmen who disposed of the remains. I’ve been through it all. Conducted searches. Nothing. Better forget that book, your honour. I’m after another, by that Irishman, you said belonged to Huici. I don’t think it’s far off. That’s what my nose tells me. When you’re least expecting something is when it knocks at the door. That’s the way of old things.’

He saw Hercules go by, that crazy photographer with the horse. Terranova’s friend. He couldn’t help it. His orbital look upset things. Not for him, but for his memory. Blasted memory, always up to no good. Going off like that without his permission. Now following the photographer and his horse. He knew their story. The horse was from Cuba, Vidal had brought it with his son’s photographic equipment. But Leica had kept it in his studio. He wanted to be an artist. Not lead a horse about. So he rented it to Hercules, or lent it, whatever the arrangement was, you never know, they belonged to the same group, did him a favour, lent him the horse and instant camera. The horse’s eyes were well done. The point is horse and photographer made him nervous. It was too much. Why hadn’t he gone as well, that colossus, cowboy, hick, subnormal, champ, son of a whore, why hadn’t he left instead of wandering around the city like a ghost complete with wooden quadruped?

Tomás Dez was so distracted, distracted and disturbed, as if he’d heard ‘Chessman’ carried on the breeze, was so preoccupied he didn’t notice his secretary’s warning signs when he reached the censor’s office. So this stranger coming up to him, dressed like a sailor from a spectral boat, caught him by surprise.

‘Are you the censor?’

Censor? It was true. He was one of the censors. He gave him a supercilious look. ‘I’m very busy.’ And carried straight on to the door of his office.

‘I was forsook!’

He turned around as if he’d heard a strange, inescapable code.

‘You what?’

‘I’ve been waiting for months for a reply. My book. A book of poems. Called
I Was Forsook
.’

‘What’s it about?’

‘The Most Mysterious of the Mysterious.’

Interesting. I was forsook? I was forsook? Part of his memory identified the echo.

‘Just a minute,’ said Dez. ‘I’ve some matters to attend to and then I’ll come back to you.’

He was feeling generous. Time to redeem yourself, Dez, said his ironic side. Possibly the taste on his palate after chewing ‘Chessman’, the condemned man’s song. Why be despotic with this old sailor in a worn overcoat, invoking the Most Mysterious? He shut the door and rummaged through the pile of originals waiting for a report. It had been some time since he’d read or processed anything. His problem with dermatitis was getting worse. Other times, it cleared up completely. Like now.

There it was:
I Was Forsook
. Signed: Aurelio Anceis.

He opened the book. Was hit by the unforeseeable. By way of a preface, two lines from a medieval poem by Pero Guterres:

What was this? He turned the page. Read:

He read:

Commander Dez would recite the poem ‘Crusade’ that evening at a literary gathering in Rita Angélica’s home. Everyone was amazed. Somebody had just dedicated a piece of nonsense to Christopher Columbus. They were all sitting around in armchairs decorated with chintz. They knew he was forthright. They still remembered the day he read Pemán’s ‘Beast and the Angel’, which sounded like a further declaration of war. But this poem . . .

They were stunned. Rita suggested, ‘It’s very different from your previous work.’

You could say that again! He read:

He read:

He read:

He lifts the receiver. Dials an internal number. He can’t picture the visitor. Can’t see his face. He’s too anxious. Tells his secretary, ‘The guy waiting in a sailor’s hat and coat, don’t let him leave.’

‘Why are you so angry with God?’

The cough that exploded violently from his chest, which Anceis suppressed by placing a handkerchief over his mouth, didn’t make him any weaker. Rather it suggested he had little to lose. Dez the censor finally understood the unusual precision, the physiological composition, of certain passages. Like this one from ‘The Fisherman Remembers the Matchstick-maker’:

After the coughing fit, he was again strong enough to speak.

‘What do you think? I censured myself before coming here,’ said Aurelio Anceis suddenly. ‘Imagine a verse that simply reproduced the legend on official coins: “Caudillo of Spain by the grace of God”. This excess is overt blasphemy. The total lack of God is an excess and excess, a terrible lack. Which leads to a second verse, an elementary question: “Could I speak to the Boss, please?”’

‘You did well to censure that,’ said Dez ironically. ‘It would have been unpublishable. But the sense of unease, the constant allusions to defeat. This poem entitled “News of Defeat” . . . You could have found another date that wasn’t the 1st of April. You discourage the victors, so imagine the losers. This other one that speaks of the 18th of July. You should be more careful. Coming here. Talking about it.’

Aurelio Anceis’ face had a knotty seriousness. He didn’t move and his breathing, a loud, inner bubbling, sounded like that of someone living inside him. His eyes, half-closed, seemed to have landed on gaps in his rough skin, like shiny beetles attracted by his elongated eyelashes.

‘In the poem about a doris, there’s some respite at least: “The lonely fisherman constructs a place with his oars . . . Constructing somewhere with a lonely fisherman from Halifax.”’

‘You think? Do you know what a doris is?’

‘I do now. I asked. Thanks to you. Poetry’s mission is also to inform.’

Dez the censor stood up and went over to the window. He referred to the labourers, all the people in the street, ‘Everybody keeps a safe distance. Everybody except for the poets. Those who reveal the inner sanctuary, get to say the unspeakable.’

Aurelio Anceis watched his hand moving like a baton.

‘They’re unaware,’ Dez continued, ‘of a metaphysical change in history. From being to time, and from time to being. Off with time!’ He rubbed his hands. A way of applauding himself, thought Anceis. And then lamented, ‘They think I’m talking about watchmaking. Makes no difference. Your poems, Mr Anceis, are extraordinary!’

He fell silent. Looked at him. He was waiting for some kind of reaction. That was a real compliment, thought Anceis. But he didn’t say anything.

‘In short, I’ll do whatever it takes to publish them.’ And he added jokingly, ‘If necessary, we’ll move heaven and earth!’

Then Anceis had a sense of foreboding. Something that sprang up in his intestines like a biological warning and affected his poems. Suddenly the reason he was there ceased to be relevant. He held his sailor’s hat, turning it slowly, not always in the same direction, but like someone steering. He stood up, put on his hat and made to take back the original. Dez got there first. ‘Extraordinary.’ He opened the folder and read an extract he didn’t know, but pretended he did. He recited the last bit as if he knew it off by heart.

‘Mysterious,’ said Dez. ‘There’s something moving.’

Anceis watched him silently.

‘Godthab?’ asked the censor. ‘Somewhere to do with God?’

‘It’s a port in Greenland.’

Not wanting to be subjected to a poetic interrogation, he volunteered a few bare details.

‘Most of the cod-fishing fleet refuels in St Pierre, St John’s or Nova Scotia. I spent time on a ship that went a little further, to the Davis Strait, on the edge of the Arctic Polar Circle. We stopped over in Godthab.’

‘Just once?’

‘That’s right.’

‘So the Godthab woman really existed? Was she an Eskimo?’

‘She was an Inuit. They say Inuit. It means person. Eskimo is an eater of raw flesh. Inuit is a person.’

‘What happened? I imagine you can say. Did you take her on board ship?’

Anceis became thoughtful. One hand explored the other. Dez couldn’t know, but the old sailor was slotting breadcrumbs between his fingers. They headed and cleaned the cod, using canvas gloves. The fish from the sea were covered in slime that filtered through the canvas and, with the cold, caused cracks around the finger-joints, which were very difficult to heal and withstand. The best way to avoid the fingers rubbing together was to sleep with breadcrumbs between them.

But these were intimate, insignificant details. What did they matter to this bureaucrat who wouldn’t let go of his texts, whom books had to ask for permission to exist and who was suddenly on heat because of the Godthab woman?

Aurelio Anceis said, ‘All the information you need is in the poem. It’s a poem with a lot of information.’

And added, ‘Sorry, but I have to leave.’

The Bramble Sphere

Ferns were her merchandise. Green ferns. She carried a huge bundle.

‘Half the mountain, my dear.’

She sold them at Muro Fishmarket as a way of bedding and protecting the fish that were exported in pinewood boxes. In the case of women carrying ferns on top of their heads, there was a strange coincidence. They brought the largest burden and took away the fewest coins. One day, Lola, painted by Chelo, made some extra income. She came with the whole mountain on top of her head. On St John’s Eve, she brought posies containing seven aromatic herbs. They were soaked in water overnight for the healing bath of the morning, since this herbal water washed inside and out. The posy was then kept at home and a year later, dried out, thrown on to the St John bonfires. Which is why there were three paintings by Chelo Vidal of that woman from Orro.
Woman with Ferns
.
Woman with St John Posies
. And
Woman with Bramble Sphere
.

If you calmly study the woman carrying ferns, who looks the most humble, she eventually acquires a noble bearing. As if she held a large, natural basket, a mysterious heart of the forest, a green monstrance. Talking of wild plants, it was she who one day said, ‘For me, brambles make the best rope.’

‘Brambles?’

‘They’re as flexible as string and as tough as leather. It’s just a shame about the prickles.’

Chelo was stunned by her description. She’d always thought of brambles as aggressive and intractable, only letting up during the blackberry season. Even then, you had to pick the fruit as if your fingers were a blackbird’s beak.

A blackbird hopped between Chelo’s head and the Woman with Ferns.

‘Of course life is full of blackberries and prickles,’ said Lola, the Woman with Ferns. ‘It’s a brier from start to finish.’

This conversation gave rise to what today is one of Chelo Vidal’s most famous works. In many reviews, it is given as the pinnacle of a new symbolism, being in this sense the most direct painting in the series ‘Women Carrying Things on Top of Their Heads’. But this doesn’t stop it being one of her most enigmatic works because of what some have termed ‘the unsettling calm’ of the
Woman with Bramble Sphere
.