Books Burn Badly

Dead Man’s Slap

IT WAS THE Castrelos iron bridge over the Miño. The night enlarged its arched contours. The night enlarged everything. The dark mountainside as well, crowned by a church with its fortress-like structure. When there’s no hope, everything seems to be on the side of the crime. The moon’s projector. The barn owl’s timed call. The metallic echo of footsteps. Everything grew bigger, the mouth of the river as well, the roar of its current, the yawning abyss, except for him. He felt smaller, the size he was when he visited the bridge for the first time with his father, who read out the inscription of the foundry, ‘Zorroza Bilbao 1907’, and talked to him of progress. The bridge was beautiful. ‘An improvement on nature,’ his father said. And he agreed that the riverbanks and mountains, even the church, looked better thanks to the bridge. Because there they were, in the middle, leaning on the parapet, seeing the river with the bridge’s new eyes. If they made a postcard of Castrelos, it would have to show the bridge. Being there now, on the bridge, at night, he knew what it meant. There was no need to write anything. Just the sender’s name. A sign of non-existence. Wherever the postcard went, they’d know he was no longer important to the force of gravity. What happened to him wouldn’t even be death. The murderers, if they drank, would say, ‘We took him for a walk by the river.’ There is no killing, only the dead.

When the murderers threw him off the bridge, he weighed the same as that postcard he’d imagined on his first visit. Suddenly he regained his real body. He gripped the two iron bars with such strength his hands were made of iron, formed part of the foundry, ‘Zorroza Bilbao 1907’. The landscape was not a hostile stage set. It was on tenterhooks, amazed, waiting for something other than that premeditated crime to happen. Perhaps the Castrelos iron bridge had also grown tired of being a place of horror in the hunt for humans. To start with, the murderers laughed. ‘He doesn’t want to fall,’ said one of them, kicking at his hands with the toecap of his boot. Gradually getting annoyed because he wouldn’t let go. ‘Blasted eternity! Let me.’ And the other rammed his fingers with the butt of his rifle.

‘They’re made of the same metal as the bridge! Considering he’s a teacher, he’s got a blacksmith’s hands.’

‘They’re not iron,’ said the other. ‘You’ll see.’

He took out a knife and flicked it open. For the victim hanging from the bridge, night again enlarged things. The voice of a face he couldn’t see. A blade glinting in the moonlight.

‘It’d be better if he let go,’ said the one with the knife, cutting into his first finger, addressing his colleague, not him, as if the latter no longer responded to the world of words. ‘Why won’t he let go?’

The second in the group (there was a third with a rifle at one end of the bridge) stood watching two fingers, wondering why, having been cut, they didn’t move. Like lizard tails. ‘I don’t think he’s going to let go,’ he said.

The group leader quickly sliced through the other fingers. He was furious and very offended by the victim causing all this mess. The normal thing would be for him to die as he fell against the rocks on the bottom and be carried off by the waters. When he did finally let go, the third soldier, feeling impatient, shot at the white shirt flying through the air as if it were the barn owl from before, enlarged and fallen. Then the three of them started shooting. At the human specimen, the river, the night. Another job for the Arnoia boatwoman, who’d have to recover another body from the water. Apparently the magistrate had said to her, ‘No more dead, please.’ But she rescued them for the families, who trudged up and down the river, searching for missing relatives. Besides, however careful they were, neither she nor the other boatmen downriver would ever find all of those who’d been sacrificed. Some bodies would end up going westwards, out to sea. Who knows where the ocean currents will take them? A man thrown off Castrelos bridge could end up off Rostro, or Galway, in Ireland. Or in the Atlantic trench by Cape Prior, at a depth of eight hundred fathoms, from where he’ll never come back.

Or he’ll come back on foot, upriver, to a bar in the Ribeiro region, in the self-same parish, twenty years later.

‘What are you having?’ asks the bar owner, a man they sometimes call Abisinio, sometimes Silvo. He has a bitter look. His wine isn’t made from the finest grapes.

‘A jug of wine,’ says the outsider.

The barman serves him a jug and cup. Time goes by. The outsider remains silent and motionless. Staring at the jug. The barman comes and goes. Also glances at the jug from time to time.

He doesn’t usually talk to his customers, especially if they’re strangers. When he clears his throat, it sounds like a snarl.

‘What? Not drinking?’

He doesn’t like being a barman. Behind the bar, he feels shut up inside a cage.

‘Not if you don’t serve me,’ replies the customer calmly.

He’s in the same position he was in when he arrived.

‘Customers here serve themselves,’ says the barman, suppressing his anger. ‘We’re all on good terms.’

The outsider then takes his hands out of his pockets. With stunted fingers.

All on good terms.

‘That’s what a dead man’s slap is like,’ related Polka.