Books Burn Badly (7 page)

Curtis had a photographic memory so, given his role as impromptu spokesperson for the event, he decided to borrow a phrase Holando had used.

‘It’s a sort of Pantagruelian meal.’

‘And what’s in that alien meal?’

Curtis wasn’t entirely sure what Holando had meant. But he’d liked the phrase and understood what he was trying to say not just from his ruddy expression, but because of the word itself, which was fulsome and whose meaning seemed to dance on top of its letters.

‘Pantagruelian is Pantagruelian, as its name indicates.’

‘Lots of it?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Well, why don’t you say so, so that people can understand?’

‘It’s a question of culture, right, Curtis?’

‘That’s right, culture. And there’ll be lectures too.’

‘Lectures? Hmmm. Don’t scare everybody off! A party’s a party.’

‘They’re before the meal. To give you an appetite.’

‘All right then. It’s not just the rich who’ll partake of a bit of culture.’

‘Caneiros is an excursion the dead would go on if they could,’ underlined another.

‘That’s right,’ Curtis agreed, ‘and I can get you tickets. This year, there’s a special train. That’s right, a special train.’ He liked to repeat it because he thought, as he gave the information, he could hear the departing whistle and the engine’s eager optimism as it pulled out. And then they were on the boat, the Atlantic tide returning the river to its sources and the bagpiper Polka playing an aubade on the stern.

Three pesetas each. And he could get them tickets for the special train to Caneiros.

Vicente Curtis realised he’d never wondered where the material books are made of came from. No, he wasn’t thinking about ideas, doctrines and dreams. He knew that books had something to do with trees. There was a relation. It could be said somehow or other – and as he walked towards the pyres, he clarified his thoughts – that’s right, we could say that books come from nature. It might not even be false or exaggerated to say that books are a kind of graft. Though that would be to speak in metaphors. This was one of the things that had impressed him about Arturo da Silva, Galicia’s lightweight champion, that his head was full of metaphors. He wasn’t known for this, he was known for his hook, feared like a cobra, and for how he moved, his tireless dancing during fights. His celebrated jig. At this point in his recollections, as the first gust from the fires reached him, so similar it seemed to the leaves in autumn, a smile flickered across Curtis’ face as he heard Arturo da Silva reply to a journalist’s question in a teasing voice, ‘My jig? Don’t tell me you’re one of those who come to see a boxer’s legs!’ The second wave was the smell of untimely smoke, the mournful, afflicted smell of things that won’t burn, it reminded him of the damp, discordant smoke of green wood or the unwilling smoke of sawdust and the remnants of formwork, a fire that hides, grows cold. He knew it well because it signified bad weather and drowning. But he carried on. He knew how much Arturo da Silva loved those books. The people carrying and throwing them called out the source of their spoils, as if a guarantee of origin would give the flames the stimulus they needed, ‘Germinal Library! Hercules Cultural Association! New Era Libertarian Association! Galician Torch of Free Thinking!’ The soldier who seemed to be in charge of the fires, since he was the one others consulted, who from time to time read out titles and origins with gusto but also with nuances, like someone pronouncing a final judgement or a last word, is a man who is devoted to his mission, focused on the sacrifice, who eagerly accepts a copy a joyfully exultant colleague has run across to give him, holding it open by the flyleaves, open, that’s it, and pinned down like someone who’s just caught a rare lepidopteron and is taking it to the leader of the expedition. Time runs around like a stiff breeze, flaps its wings over the pyres and then stops. Everything now hangs on the decree. Finally the supervisor cries out, ‘My word, it’s a Casaritos!’

He pores over the guarantee of authenticity, the distinguishing mark, the ex-libris that matches the owner’s signature.

‘Yes, well done. It’s a genuine Casaritos!’

Curtis knows who he’s talking about. He knows who the supervisor is referring to by this diminutive he relishes with pleasurable disdain. On one occasion, on Panadeiras Street, next to the Capuchins’ myrtle, his mother pointed out Santiago Casares Quiroga, the Republican leader, to him and then boasted, ‘We’re practically neighbours.’ Then, however, Curtis had paid attention not to Casares, whom he already knew as the Man with the Red Buick and the yacht
Mosquito
, but to the woman and girl accompanying him. The woman wore her hair down in a mahogany blaze while the girl, unusually for her age, wore a white velvet cap with a hairnet, which covered her dancing curls. The Woman with the Mahogany Hair smiled, adopting a pose Terranova would have termed ‘a natural close-up’, while the Girl with the Hairnet seemed preoccupied, her presence austere and even surly. She kept looking back as if she feared that some of those applauding, since many of the people on the pavement had burst into spontaneous applause, would turn into a mob, snatch her cap and abduct her parents. The rest of the time, she stared at the ground absent-mindedly. Casares’ shoes were black and white like a tap-dancer’s. Curtis was convinced that if he showed the soles for a moment, they’d be as shiny as the rest, polished like an upside-down mirror. It wasn’t long before they became the object of the couple and their daughter’s attention. Curtis’ mother was carrying a rolled-up mattress on her head. The mattress had a red damask cover and Curtis’ mother was content. She smiled at the couple and their daughter. This gesture had the effect of cheering the girl, who was surprised, intrigued by a woman smiling with such a load on top of her head. Curtis was also content. He was carrying a blue damask mattress. But he was used to that. The first thing he’d learnt in the street was that he was the son of a whore.

‘Hercules, son of a whore!’

There was Hercules Lighthouse, Hercules Cinema, Hercules Café, Hercules Transport, Hercules Insurance. The city had a myriad Hercules. Why did he have to be precisely Hercules son of a whore?

No sooner had he emerged into the street than he heard the drone of that nickname. He heard insults and would have liked them to pass on by, to fly far away from him. But the nicknames clustered around him like wasps. And sometimes they stung him. Died, stuck to his skin. So as a small boy Vicente Curtis understood that, just as his mother carried a mattress on her head, he carried another being on his shoulders. His nickname. Hercules, son of a whore. The difference between one Curtis and the other was that Curtis the carrier looked permanently mystified while Hercules, the other Curtis, was indomitable. Years later, when he was a travelling photographer and had a wooden horse, the mystified and indomitable took turns to be cameraman or invisible horseman. Which is why Hercules sometimes didn’t talk or talked to himself. Before the war, when he was a promising boxer, the boy who held the champ of Galicia’s gloves for him, his friends couldn’t understand why he minded being called ‘Hercules’. He would have preferred ‘Maxim’ or ‘The Corner’. Even ‘Tough Guy’ was better, which is what Terranova the singer called him. But not Hercules. He didn’t like it. ‘What do you mean, you don’t like
Hercules
, you fool?’ they said to him. ‘That’s how you were born. You know nothing about honour. Just imagine the poster: “Today, Saturday, in Coruña Bullring, star combat: Vicente Curtis ‘Hercules’ versus . . .”’

‘He has another daughter,’ said Milagres suddenly. ‘He has another daughter studying abroad. He’s a good man.’

He had another daughter and was a good man. Curtis felt as if he were missing part of the story. So he waited for Milagres to catch her breath. When you’re carrying a mattress on top of your head, even if the cover is damask, it’s not easy to go into great detail.

Milagres finally told the story:

‘When he was studying to be a lawyer in Madrid, he had an affair, apparently with his landlady. And the result was a daughter. Do you know what happened? He kept the child. He didn’t just give her his name and some maintenance money. He turned up in Coruña with the child. On his own. The child in his arms on the train. He didn’t give a damn what people might think. Oh, no. How many men in the world would do that?’

Milagres was very discreet. She had a reputation for being tight-lipped. But she asked that question on the pavement of Panadeiras Street as if she were directing it to the whole universe. The answer as well, accompanied by a flourish, ‘I could count them on the fingers of this hand!’

From the skylight, the back of 12 Panadeiras Street looked something like a toy garden surrounded by walls clad in ivy and passion flowers. On holidays, the girl, helped by a maid, would bring out the cages with budgerigars on to the balcony. And conduct the orchestra of birds with a stick. The garden had cats, a numerous family, and Curtis can see the Casares’ daughter telling them to sit down and listen to the concert. Some of the older, more worldly-wise toms pretend to obey and park their bottoms.

‘Hey you, what’s your name?’

The girl had interrupted the concert, pointed towards him with the stick and shouted out her question. At that point in time, Curtis was a sort of alien. A head with a body in the shape of a three-storey house. He replied and asked her the same question.

‘María Vitoria!’

‘You what?’

‘Vitola,’ she said. ‘My name’s Vitola.’

She put down the stick and, with her hands as a speaking-trumpet, shouted out some news that echoed in the backyards, across the border separating the well-to-do from the seedy district of Papagaio, ‘My father’s just come out of prison.’

Of prison? Curtis was shocked. What had Mr Casares been doing in prison? In Madrid as well. In the capital city. It must have been something serious if they’d taken him there. He was an educated man. Rich too! He had a Buick, he had his yacht
Mosquito
. He wore a tie and shoes that were so polished they reflected the clouds. He was also a lawyer. One of those who got people out of jail. It was even said he’d defended free thinkers and anarchists and stopped them going to jail. He also had tuberculosis. It was difficult to understand what Mr Casares had been doing behind bars in Madrid when he was supposed to keep people out of prison.

Vitola turned up one day dressed as an Indian. With plaits. Somebody had managed to restrain her curls, those waves Curtis liked so much. It wasn’t any old outfit. She looked like a woman. A little woman. She sounded like one too.

‘Curtis!’ she cried. ‘Get down here!’

His head was sticking out of the skylight. What did she mean, get down? Impossible. He’d kill himself.

‘The other way, silly. Come down through the front door.’

Curtis didn’t tell anyone where he was rushing off to, nor could they have imagined. It was the first time he’d set foot in 12 Panadeiras Street. What surprised him most was that the walls of the house were made of books. That and the outfits of Vitola and her friends, who were all wearing exotic costumes.

‘Curtis is the only native,’ said Gloria, the mother who looked like a film star, with those large, daring eyes and mahogany hair. Native, Curtis mused. Another alias. Hmmm. Gloria spent most of the party next to the window, smoking and looking out on to Panadeiras Street. Occasionally she would change the Bakelite record on the electric gramophone. Many years later, whenever he passed that way with his camera and Carirí, his horse, Curtis sought out the window and the glass, like a plate, sent back the image of Vitola’s mother. It was simple. You had to photograph back to front. Instead of capturing images, release them.

He enjoyed that party he could never have dreamt of being invited to. He was the only man. A native, that’s right. He danced with women of all races. The adults may have thought it was only a game. But for them it was something more. He understood the importance for people of getting dressed up. He was older than Vitola, but the Vitola who stared at him while she danced did so from a new face, from make-up. Shortly afterwards, her father was appointed a minister of the Second Republic. At the end of the summer of 1931, the family moved to Madrid. But at Christmas the lights on the tree in 12 Panadeiras Street came on again.

It was midnight already. Too late for Christmas Eve dinner. It was his now inseparable companion Luís Terranova who rang the changes. And Luís Terranova didn’t want to spend that evening at home. He didn’t want to see his mother cry. He didn’t want to eat cod and cauliflower. It was like biting into his father’s memory. The cod so pale and fleshy. The flower-heads like funeral bouquets.

‘You’re lucky,’ he told Curtis. ‘Christmas Eve at the Dance Academy is much more fun. Lots more people crying together around a pile of sweets. I wish I had that many aunts!’

At that point, they watched a carriage arrive, pulled by two horses, and heard a gong sound in 12 Panadeiras Street. The Christmas tree lights were reflected in the ground-floor windows. Father Christmas got out of the carriage with a sack.

The two of them stood on the pavement, their hands in their pockets, a puff of breath around their mouths, like cartoon figures who remain speechless.

Father Christmas looked around.

‘Good evening!’

‘Evening, Mr Casares!’

Father Christmas went inside 12 Panadeiras Street and Terranova gave Curtis a nudge. ‘Casares? That Father Christmas was the minister?’

‘That’s right.’

‘He could have left us a present. Shared the weight out.’

‘I think he was carrying books. Books for the most part. Books are heavy.’

‘Well, he could have given us one!’ exclaimed Terranova. ‘Even if it was a book. To say the least!’

One of Curtis’ part-time jobs had been to cart books for the Faith bookshop. He brought them in a barrow from the railway station. They were kept in boxes. One of them, the biggest, had a label which read
Man and the Earth
(Reclus). Another big one contained
The White Magazine-The Ideal Novel
. Smaller ones were marked
Mother
(Maxim Gorky),
The Story of the Heavens
(Stawell Ball),
Metamorphosis
(Franz Kafka),
How to Become a Good Electrician
(T. Corner). As he pushed the iron-wheeled barrow, he stared at the labels. ‘Maxim’. He liked that name as a possible alias for the day he became a boxer. ‘Kid Kafka’ wasn’t bad either. And ‘The Corner’. That was perfect. But he liked ‘Maxim’ as well. The books were heavy. Tobacco weighs a lot less. As do condoms. Terranova was into the international trade of liners. Whatever he could hide under his coat. He was paid in kind by the crew members he took on a tour of the city. An easy job. Many of them stopped not far from port, in Luisa Fernanda’s cabaret or the Méndez Núñez, charmed by the Garotas variety show. The way they came out half naked, singing with a puppet between their legs, ‘Mummy, buy me a negro, buy me a negro from the bazaar, who dances the Charleston and plays the Jazzman.’ Terranova imitated their performance with a boxing glove between his legs. What a clown he was and how well he did it. As when he pushed the barrow and stopped. Read the labels on the boxes one by one. ‘Man, earth, heavens, mother . . . What you doing with all this weight, Curtis? You got the whole world in here.’ ‘I’m going to the Faith bookshop.’ ‘That’s right,’ he replied, ‘always trying to help. To carry all this, you’d need the barrow of faith.’ There were days he spoke like an old man.