Books Burn Badly

Dez and Terranova

HE TURNED ON the light again and started reading without conviction. He only paid attention to the advertisements. The sleepless gaze does what it wants to. He noticed something he hadn’t seen before. The large number of advertisements for electrical appliances, flexible mattresses and shampoos. Great emphasis was laid on the anti-dandruff properties of these last products. It seemed the whole of Spain had taken to washing its hair. He’d brought a stack of newspapers from the censor’s office and was reading ABC, which was published in Madrid. He also had Arriba, the Falange’s official mouthpiece. It was its newspaper, its doctrinal spokesperson, a necessary resource to know what was going on in the hierarchy, essential reading for a man in his position. He sometimes amused himself trawling for small differences. The relevance or absence of a news item. The language of silence. The conservative, monarchist daily had introduced the odd comment on Europe, was even in favour of Europeanism, a reviled concept in the press of the Movement, whose leading exponent was Arriba. Europeanism was the Trojan Horse of the opposition, the enemy, those in exile. In another time, a time that seemed to him now unreal, in which he hadn’t quite managed to affirm his existence, he’d written a great deal on Europe, the rebuilding of a new Holy German-Roman Empire based on the triumphs of Hitler, Mussolini and Franco, with the Pope’s blessing. An intellectual standpoint shared by many. The official line. Occasionally time played the dirty trick of returning with the sweaty, delirious thickness of an epidemic, making him believe the Holy Empire was something he’d imagined and in Spain, Europe, the world, only he had written such things. He then decided in his dream to board empty, phantasmagorical vehicles, which drove him through the night to every nook and cranny that had an archive or library. He’d break down the doors and expunge those pro-Nazi articles of his. But almost everything was pro-Nazi, an unending trail. The paper multiplied and grew. He would tear and tear. He’d written the same as everybody, hadn’t he? The judge, for example, his friends at the magazine Arbor, Catholics from the Opus, the leading jurist, Carl Schmitt, weren’t they still saying the same in a different way? In his nightmare, however, the judge Samos would turn to him, ‘How could you have written those things, Dez?’

‘What things?’

‘What do you think? That praise of Nazism. You should have censured yourself, damn it! You have to know how to control yourself. Change style.’

‘Look who’s talking!’

‘I was different. I was a Catholic, remember? The katechon. The one who draws the line. That’s what I’m doing.’

‘Hang on a minute! You’re not the only one. I also draw the line. Mark words in red. It’s not so easy to keep words in line. They’re like cockroaches or rats. They live underground, in sewers, among tombs. They’re like insects. Bacteria. It’s easy to stop men in their tracks, but it’s not so easy to contain words. Silences, pauses, are part of language. A man in silence, if he’s honest, is dangerous.’

‘You should have censured yourself, Dez.’

And so on. Banging on about it. There was something perverse about recommending control to a censor. He also could return to the past, if he wanted, like a dog to its vomit. Remind Samos of who he was. The university student who fancied himself as a Catholic intellectual, beholden to the idea of a benevolent God, still reluctant and hesitant on the eve of the coup, like that day in Pontevedra Square when he trembled in front of Arturo da Silva, the boxing plumber, who grabbed his pistol from his hand and chucked it into the sea in Orzán. ‘Weapons are not toys, young man,’ he told him and threw it over the heads of bathers, a parabola seen by everyone, how embarrassing, though he took his revenge, how a man can change in one month, the sudden stimulation of the cultivated Catholic, aesthete, orator, bibliographer, how the blood rises to his eyes and the once cowardly student is ready for anything, even he, Dez, was surprised, what resolve, what firm steps, his pulse is steady, armed and in uniform he looks taller, stronger, his subtle voice has become more daring. He’s now in charge. He’s standing with him, in front of the pyres of books, down by the docks.

‘The Divine Sketch!’

‘Manuel Curros Enríquez. Straight in the fire!’

‘Remember, Samos?’

He didn’t know why he chose Samos as his rival in that nightmare, that night of sticky hours, of a melting clock. Why he conducted such a tense dialogue, since they were on the same side and of the same opinion. The ending, however, never changed. The mere mention of burning books dissipated the scene. All the characters fell silent. Disappeared. The nightmare was officially over. There was no specific instruction. They hadn’t assembled on purpose to agree on perpetual silence, nor had it been suggested at some meeting. The burning of books had simply ceased to exist. The pact of silence applied to the subconscious as well.

No. 5 Chanel Paris.

Everything was contained in that bottle.

It took up an entire page of ABC.

It was like a strange event that captivated his eyes. He realised they were being disobedient, weren’t the slightest bit interested in the articles or reports on the mournful, doctrinal pages of Arriba. All the news and charm were in the emerging publicity.

The censor would have liked to hold that bottle in his hand.

Yes, ABC had much more publicity and its superior, glossy pages showed off the advertisements and emitted the tinkle of money being paid for large spaces: the plots of land in Torrelodones, attention, girlfriends of doctors, engineers, professionals, come and visit the flats being built in the Pilar district. More shampoos, more flexible mattresses, more electrical appliances. On the leisure pages, the eyes were drawn to the large advertisements for fashionable nightclubs in Madrid, such as Black Swan and Moulin Rouge. One of the advertisements was for a Kelvinator refrigerator, which had a smiling woman next to it with an American flag in one hand and a Spanish flag in the other. He got up. In the fridge, there was only a cauliflower and a plate with flakes of cod on it. Both things looked yellow, as if stained by the interior light of a prison. He’d been ‘on night duty’, what in military terms he called not having slept, tossing and turning. He slammed the fridge door shut and started pacing up and down the corridor, a manic-depressive walk in which he went from a sorrowful, reflective state, practising something as difficult as a seductive excuse, to a progressive state of war. The way he walked matched his mood. There was a pause. He put on the record of ‘La favorita’ and sat down on the edge of the sofa to wait, in the secret hope that the thickness of the music would give way to the sound of Luís Terranova arriving, a key turning, a door opening that changes everything. He murmured sounds of regret. Felt happy. Fine. His singing kept the romance company. Vien, Leonora, a’ piedi tuoi serto e soglio. . Of what importance was the time? Who could be disturbed by the sublime? Rest, sleep, all you cuckolds, while bel canto’s High Command on permanent night duty discusses a prince’s fate in a room of curtains with turbulent folds, like Sotomayor’s sumptuous, warlike sky in his paintings of enhanced bigwigs. That’s what I call having a painter to hand. Taking midgets to the heights. He got up at the end of the music and went over to the window. He could easily imagine himself in a portrait by Sotomayor. Conquerors painted with conquering paint. Successful outcome guaranteed. Needless to say, Sotomayor, Director-General of Fine Arts, was out of his reach. The ranks of painting. What about his pupils? Of the ones he knew, there was none he liked, who was up to the task, without being decadent or abstract. Chelo Vidal was, without doubt, a good painter. Nothing in common with the school of Sotomayor, of course, her art was semi-naive like Chagall’s. Her realism had mystery. That was the word. Now that he thought about it, she put aura on the canvas. The judge was right. She should be better known. Leave the provinces. Change theme. She couldn’t spend her whole life painting those women with things on top of their heads. Even if she had a special way of doing it. No, they weren’t typical scenes. It wasn’t folk-art. The women she captured out and about turned into goddesses on the canvas. That chap from the shipping company who bought everything of hers was smart. Before she finished a painting, he’d already bagged it. ‘Jews,’ Ren said to him one day laconically. He did look a bit like a Jew. His surname was Loureiro. Laurel, the name of a tree. Apparently anyone named after a tree is of Jewish ancestry: Maceiras, Carballo, Pexegueiro, Nespereira, Freixo, Salgueiro. . Apple, Oak, Peach, Medlar, Ash, Willow. . But that would make half of Galicia Jewish! Lots to think about. That Ren doesn’t even trust his shadow. You can’t live like that. Doesn’t even trust the dead. He told him he had to calm down. ‘You won’t have a single enemy left, Ren. Leave a cripple for the museum at least. Don’t take your duty so seriously.’ He said it as a joke. But the humorous side of Ren’s brain wasn’t very well developed. ‘I don’t do it out of duty,’ he replied. ‘I do it because I want to. We all have our pleasures and this is mine.’ One day, he had to cut him short. Because of Luís Terranova, who else? ‘That assistant of yours, that singer. .’

‘That’s my business, Ren. He’s my ward. Didn’t I tell you he was my ward, Ren? I think I made it clear.’

He was going to add, ‘Gilda has a ward.’ Because nothing is hidden and Commander Dez also has his spies. Out and about. One of whom informed him. Too much drink and even mutes loosen their tongue. Which is what happened to him. He referred to Gilda when talking about the staff working in censorship. He quickly pointed out he didn’t mean anyone in particular, but it was too late for that.

‘We all have our things, Ren. I have an assistant, like so many others. He’s clean and attentive. And if I ask him to sing, he sings. Even “Amado Mio”, like Gilda, like Rita Hayworth doing a striptease. He sings very well, but I don’t have to force him. Got it, Ren?’

Ren grunted and fell silent. He understood.

Yes. The judge and he were old friends. He’d picked up one of the most beautiful women in Coruña. Not that it was obvious, you had to spot her beauty and he’d spotted it. Good shot, Ricardo Samos. A woman who was both artistic and sporty. Modern, but not in the modern style. A futuristic woman, he thought, and chuckled. He also had been a futuristic poet. For a few months, like Eugenio Montes. What had happened to futurism? In fridges. He found it in the advertisements for electrical appliances. Yes. Artist and swimmer. He’d known Chelo Vidal before the war. She was one of the sirens who swam from Coruña to Ferrol. The judge was a Triton. Dez too, in his own way. He laughed to himself. So the judge spotted her, if you like, at sea. Next they coincided at an exhibition. A retrospective of women painters. The Republic encouraged all that stuff about free women. It included María Corredoira, Maruja Mallo, Elena Olmos, Lola Díaz Baliño and others. Chelo Vidal was one of those unknown others. She used a pseudonym back then, what was it? Oh, it doesn’t matter. She was there. Samos spent more time looking at her than at the paintings. And the paintings weren’t bad. What Dez noticed was Chelo’s outfit. Each to his own. Now, in censorship, he enjoyed going to measure the cabaret singers’ skirts and necklines. Chelo Vidal was wearing a black rayon suit, with wide trouser legs like two hybrid skirts. Around her waist, an esparto belt like a sailor’s rope. The shape of the sleeves accentuated her slim arms. The whole effect was boyish. So natural, so simple, that was what made it so provocative. Whatever happened to that black rayon suit? The war had quashed such pleasures and it would be many years before a woman, even Chelo Vidal, dared to wear a trouser suit again in public. He used to say, as a provocation, that he liked women in trousers. Women dressed as men. It upset his machos. What the hell, he could afford to take such liberties. After all, he was one of the conquerors. From censorship, I grant you, but I have my tastes. And closet intimacies. He didn’t say this, of course. If he didn’t do what he did, he could have been an expert in fashion. The point is Ricardo Samos and Chelo Vidal were distant relations through her father and his mother. Half cousins. Yes, he remembers Samos’ eyes and impassioned words when he fell for the rayon artist, ‘This cousin of mine is worthy of a crime!’ A real compliment. The war found her in France on a scholarship awarded by the government to a group of young artists. But, unlike many others, she came back after the Victory. She was an artist but without blemish. None that could be uncovered. Except for her brother. That good-for-nothing photographer. This Leica was friends with Huici, who turned his tailor’s shop into an avant-garde hang-out and ended the way he did. Leica saved his skin thanks to his sister and her marriage. He’s not a bad lad. He married a local boss’s daughter, who was crazy about him. He must have something. She won’t let him out whatever the weather. Enough to make any stone warm, so I’m told. He went to photograph a couple who’d just got married, straight out of church, in Mariñán Gardens. First, photos of the two of them, like that, smiling. Now the bride on her own. He takes his time, adjusts the white tulle dress without spoiling the train. That’s right. The bridegroom gets bored, heads off to see to the reception. The photographer and bride are left alone to work with the light. The expression, look at me, don’t look at me. They touch, hair better like that, he moves the bouquet, neckline far prettier, and of course it was a hot day, filled with aromas, on the banks of the Mandeo, a day for Caneiros, anything could happen and it did. They thought they were alone. He stood with her on top, wrapped in tulle, her back pressing against the trunk of the old Jupiter tree, shaking the heavy clusters of pink flowers. The photo they made. A good one, unforgettable. It may not have been next to the Jupiter tree, but under the large canopy of the Caucasian fir. Or the showy cedar. It worked well with any tree, though he preferred the one with the pink flowers. The point is they shook their bodies and the branches. This story Dez had embroidered, which was based on unconfirmed rumours, met with great success on evenings out, especially among well-to-do couples. He avoided rude words, using instead French delicacies copied from out-of-print erotic novels, the coup de foudre, coup de folie, the coup created an atmosphere. He gave particular emphasis to his description of the combined movements of pink flowers and tulle and could see the jubilant perturbation, the colour in their cheeks. He took pleasure in their pleasure at being shocked. Listening to the censor, with a bard’s qualities, giving a coup sur coup account of the s’accoupler under the tree of the wedding photographer and newly-wed bride.

Of course he never told his elaborate story if Ricardo Samos and Chelo Vidal were present. He felt great admiration for her, the painter. She had all the presence of a great lady with the charm of a young girl who’s come from Cuba and a slight touch, like eye shadow, of having had contact with Bohemian life in the Republican city. But she always put art first. Minded her own business. Her most revolutionary act, thought Dez, had been to wear that rayon suit and dazzle Samos, it wasn’t easy for a woman to quicken his heartbeat. Samos had confided in him. First he’d made that unusual declaration, ‘This cousin of mine is worthy of a crime!’ Then he’d affirmed, ‘She’ll be my wife.’ Dez, at the time, was already a Falangist, but Samos, the future judge, still moved in the world of ideas, fancied himself as an intellectual and contributed to the magazines Acción Española and Integralismo Lusitano, fostered by two monarchist, Catholic groups whose goal was a conservative Iberian league. Back then, Samos claimed the City of God went against the Falange’s ‘primitive aggression’, though he conceded a certain ‘barbaric charm’. So Dez made fun of him, ‘If it’s action you’re after, real action, then you know whom you have to talk to.’ But it was books, not Dez’s perseverance, which led Samos to become a Fascist and join the conspiracy against the Republic. The discovery of Carl Schmitt, that Don Carlos. When they walked through Mina Square, with the huge flag bearing a swastika hanging outside the German consulate, Dez would deliberately make the Roman salute, which bothered Samos to start with. He had that Catholic prejudice against the Nazis. But he got over this after reading Schmitt. This Don Carlos took him back to Donoso Cortés and Joseph de Maistre. A concoction that transformed Samos.

Commander Dez stood up and went over to the record player. ‘La favorita’ had ended, but the record kept on turning. A fault that annoyed him, as did the disobedience of faulty machines in general. The listless, practically inaudible creak grew louder like the groan of an axle in the thick of night. He’d already told Luís Terranova to take it to be repaired.

‘It’s nothing.’

‘What do you mean, nothing?’

‘You just have to lift the arm and put it back on its rest.’

‘Why must you always contradict me?’

‘I’m not contradicting you. I just think differently.’

It had been, he thought, an electrical attraction, an attraction of opposites. For him at least. What bothered him made Terranova laugh. It would always be a mystery. Simple and irresistible. A magnetic body. Electricity. Bodies went about their own business, ignored each other, played at distances or struggled to enter each other, to fit, curves and angles, bones, muscles, gaps, vents. A forging of symmetry. Ad libitum.

‘What was that?’

‘Ad libitum.’

‘You’re crazy, degenerate.’

Degenerate. How he liked to be called that. It was one of the ‘official’ words he used daily in an attempt to classify what was unacceptable. Degenerate. With what pleasure he’d spoken of the degenerate artistic avant-garde as a symptom of social unrest and western decadence. He liked to adopt a virile tone in cultural meetings, especially in a lacklustre environment of schoolmistresses who’d secretly be reading God knows what by Pardo Bazán or Pérez Galdós and small-time artists with the informalist devil inside them, the dangerous look of hunger in those who dream of eating the world of forms. When the order came to close the magazine Atlántida, not long before, around the time Dionisio Ridruejo and others who’d gone soft in the head were disgraced in Madrid, he was one of those who informed the editorial board of the decision and how he enjoyed passing on the head censor’s anathema, ‘Existentialist claptrap!’ He did, however, make it clear this wasn’t his opinion. Sada was there, among others. Now he was a great painter, could even be described as painting itself, shame he didn’t do portraits, but fell into the sea, never to resurface. Someone else who didn’t know how to catapult themselves. And he’d been asked to paint the inside of Franco’s yacht, the Azor. Even so. There he was, catalogued under ‘existentialist claptrap’. When the alarm sounded, words came first. Standing firm, in line. He’d already warned them, after the last issue devoted to Valle-Inclán, that they were on the red line. No, these schoolmistresses and artists had no idea how much he enjoyed condemning ‘degenerate art’. He wore an expression of disgust, but inside he felt a tingling. The same tingling he felt when he heard about the ‘existentialist claptrap’ of Atlántida from head office. He chewed on these hostile words. Words he then poured with saliva, salted, leavened balls, into Terranova’s ear: degenerate, existentialist, unruly.

They shared a fascination for music. It was something that moved him, he had to confess. Arriving to find Luís Terranova listening to Schubert’s lieder, Die Forelle, that song about the trout, his eyes wide open, without eyelids, like a fish watching sounds in the flooded house. Absorbed, motionless, breathing music through his skin. And then there was his voice. His voice drove him crazy. And Dez was demanding, very demanding. He knew a real voice when he heard one. Some time ago, when Terranova came to live with him, he found him two good teachers, one for music theory and another for singing. The two of them were agreed. He had what it took, voice and talent, to triumph. But, deep down, Terranova made fun of bel canto. He always had that glint in his eyes. He lacked ambition. Wasn’t up to the task. Dez should have realised sooner. Perhaps it had been absurd to lead him in that direction. He’d got him some performances. Christmas charity concerts and the like. He could have got him more if he’d been more determined. But it wasn’t an unmitigated disaster. No one could accuse him of doing the same as the tycoon Kane with his beloved, of trying to turn that pipsqueak into an opera star. Luís Terranova was good. People liked him. Dez shuddered just to see him walk out on stage in that bow-tie. He particularly enjoyed his performances at private functions in hotels or expensive villas. He shared the applause. Was congratulated on his protégé. He wasn’t interested in rumours any more. He never bothered to clarify Terranova’s move from assistant to ward or nephew and finally to artistic protégé. He was proud. Luís Terranova was popular with both men and women. But he belonged to Dez. That much was clear. Dez would allow flirting, small seductive adventures, adulterous games at those glamorous parties. Terranova was sweet, kind and attractive, a perfect target for bored rich people during crazy nights. The censor didn’t mind such games. He took an irate pleasure in the thorns of jealousy, savoured them as the prelude to what he called training sessions, sessions of taming and conquest.

The years went by. Both leading a double life, but Dez felt sure he was in control of the situation. Terranova was used to the role he’d been given. And there was something very important, which almost no one knew, a closely guarded secret. Terranova had been taken as a slave. Terrible to say, but it was true. Terranova knew he had no life beyond Dez’s reach. And like a frightened sheep, he was being strangled by his own halter.

‘Houses have a tendency not to fall,’ says a humorous aphorism he’d used in patriotic discussions after the United Nations had condemned the regime. He was now reminded of it. Paradoxically. Because his house, his building, was in a state of collapse. Terranova had come to his office one day, looked him in the eye and told him he wanted to lead his own life. Dez wasn’t sure how to react. Luís was wearing his blue bow-tie with the silver filaments. ‘You shouldn’t wear that during the day, it loses its charm,’ he replied. ‘My own life. Starting with work. I’m not doing any more of those ulcerous performances. No more bel canto, Tomás. I’m going to sing at dances.’ Yes. What he wanted was to sing at open-air dances, for his friend, the singer Pucho Boedo, to invite him on stage, for people to ask who that guy was and for someone to say, ‘One with a voice like Pucho Boedo.’ That for him was to triumph. To be compared to Pucho Boedo. To triumph in dance halls or in the open air. To excel at a tango one Sunday evening at Chaparrita over in Ponte da Pasaxe. He’d got it into his head he was going to enter and win that radio competition, ‘Parade of Stars’, which was so popular.

‘You’re so childish! What are you going to do in “Parade of Stars”?’

‘Don’t worry. I won’t sing Violetta’s cabaletta.’

He may have overreacted. It was just a punch. The trouble is Luís was fragile. He had a glass nose and it spewed blood. He was doing it for him. So that he’d lose some of his coarseness and aim a little higher. He also overdid it the day Luís came home with that friend of his, the cowboy photographer, Papagaio’s Hercules.

‘I don’t want to see that hick here again.’

A house has a tendency not to fall. He’d turned up elegantly dressed in his office. His first visit since the time Dez had summoned him to expound his delicate situation. Years had gone by. He’d achieved his objective. He’d taken possession of him. He governed his life and enjoyed his body. Without losing face, power or position. Why’d he come? To tell him his house was in ruins?

‘What a wretch you are. I’ll crush you like a worm. You’ll end up in a prison for queens or with a bullet up your arse.’

‘I just want to lead my own life. Follow my own path.’

‘A goat always heads for the mountain, right?’

Tomás Dez went over to the window. The roofs of the Old City seemed to be squeaking like mice in the storm. The wind drove the clouds, torn from the sea’s straw mattress, to cover the first cracks of dawn.

If only he hadn’t been so inconsiderate, so wild, so. . He finally found the word a silent part of his mind had been searching for during his vigil. So ungrateful. He repeated it in a fairly loud voice to make amends to himself. So ungrateful! What was he doing awake all night, being martyred, while that pimp was out and about? Martyrdom, martyrdom, martyrdom, that was the word. From then on, his passage through the house, at the slow pace of a procession, turned into a summary trial. His walk regained its measure, his body its figure. Every step he took was a new charge laid against Luís Terranova. He finally felt well. The boss had taken over that weak, crude, unruly body. He felt well all right. As when he took the stage, alerted the audience, silenced the rustling of Sunday poems and brought not emotion, but fear to the literary festival organised by the group Amanecer. It was a spring festival and everything was going like spring. The atmosphere was relaxed, even joky. One of the participants read a poem with a questioning refrain, ‘Where’s the key?’ Until someone in the audience shouted out, ‘Here, between my balls!’ The organisation was linked to the regime, but clearly the time for ardent patriotic hymns had passed. He was nervous, he also had some ‘spring’ sheets in his hand. He’d been invited by a childhood acquaintance, a simple woman turned poet who one day had been naive enough to declare herself ‘pregnant with poetry’, having been possessed on an evening stroll in Bárbaras Square by the ghost of Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer. The point is she’d agreed to act as messenger and invite him to the festival. She said, ‘Ah, Dez! Censor and poet. How thrilling!’ Yes, she found everything thrilling. But he’d see fear on her face too. Because, when he was announced, as a poet, of course, not as censor, someone inside him forgot his ‘spring’ sheets and deadened his nerves. The boss had taken over. His voice thundered like a cannon. Put an end to smiles and rustling.

My mind has become exact, defined, sure,

from the mist of vague reality far removed.

The War is hard and pure,

as hard and pure is truth.

It was the Poem of the Beast and the Angel, José María Pemán’s contribution to the ‘holy war’ against the satanic Republic. A poem belonging to them, to the victors filling the auditorium. But they were still confused. Confused in spring. Stunned. Unsure whether to clap or not. How he enjoyed that lyrical upheaval.

He made some coffee. He felt well all right. The verdict was clear. That bastard would remember Tomás Dez for ever. He’d stuff night down his throat. He just had to make a call. Ren answered immediately. He must still sleep like that. As he said, next to both his bugs. The telephone and the pistol. Yes, it was a service, a favour after so many years. Yes, with the car. And a blanket for the upholstery. He then went to get dressed. At least his shoes were shiny. He smiled as if looking in the mirror. ‘No, no, no,’ he told his shoes, ‘don’t come to me asking for mercy!’ His walk now was martial. He felt well, stepping firmly. He looked around. The whole house was under Terranova’s charm and he’d have to reconquer it. Luís had weaved his spell on things. It was obvious. He spent more time with them. Tolerated their faults. Now, at daybreak, they were sleepless and wary. Distant. They’d be waiting for him to leave so that they could start having some fun. No doubt Terranova was thinking the same. That he’d leave early. Have his coffee and read the papers in the Oriental Café or Alcázar, next to the censor’s office. Well, no. He wasn’t going to leave.

He heard the lock muffle its own mechanism. They were in cahoots. He’d have found it impossible to open the door so quietly.

Luís Terranova was carrying a sailor’s canvas bag. Empty. He saw Dez standing erect, with his arms crossed, on the brink of dawn. Funny, he thought. In the dark, the first thing he made out were his black shoes. The shoes he’d polished. Good work. He did it almost as well as the shoeshiner in Cantón Bar.

He decided to go to his room and do what he’d planned. Take his things and leave. His belongings would easily fit in the canvas bag. He wouldn’t take any presents, not even a cravat. He could have not come back. Now that he thought about it, saw the ghost of Dez like a skeleton next to the hat-stand, it might have been better. But he wanted to show that he was leaving. As I came, I went.

‘Where are you off to? To sing in the street?’

‘Goodbye, Dez. I’m not your assistant any more. Or your ward. Or your housekeeper’s son. Or your nephew. Or your protégé. No more being a slave. No more second clown Toni. I’ve paid back the favour by now.’

Dez seized his shoulder.

‘Slavery? Hardly a sublime farewell, Terranova. After all these years, a castrato’s song at least.’

Luís was two feet away from the door. He wheeled around suddenly and hit him with the canvas bag. Not enough to stop Dez’s well-oiled machinery. Dez grabbed his hair just as he was about to leave.

‘I told you you should cut your hair as men do. Remember what I taught you? The pulmonary strength of a man for a child’s voice. You know how to imitate them. Do Gaetano Caffarelli in the Sistine Chapel!’

The pressure on his head and neck forced him on to his knees. Dez slammed the door shut. The first punch was aimed at disfigurement. Luís heard his nose crack as if part of a collapse in which the roof caved in. Perhaps all that blood was from the splintering beams. It spattered the lapels of his light-coloured jacket.

‘Now you won’t be able to do the castrato number. Give us something local. What was that song, Terranova? The one you sang to make me jealous. Don’t look at me like that. You’re far too ugly.’

‘Let go of my hair, will you, Dez? It hurts more than my nose.’

He pulled harder. A tuft of hair in his hand.

‘That really hurts,’ stuttered Terranova.

‘“I fell in love with a thorn. .” What was that song, Terranova? Sing it again. “The flower that was”. No. That wasn’t it. Do you remember? You were full of yourself. “A Pontevedran Alalá!”’

‘You shouldn’t set your heart. .’

‘That’s it, that’s it.’

‘on things that belong to the wind’.

‘Good, good. That’s our sublime farewell. Now I can really smash your face in.’

‘If you hurt me any more, I won’t be able to enter the radio competition and sing the cabaletta.’

There was an innocent, defenceless glint in Luís Terranova’s eyes. Dez watched the blood pouring out of his nostrils. It was the colour of lava.

‘I’ll take you to have that seen to,’ he said without letting go.

‘No, no. I’ll go on my own.’

‘On your own? You won’t go anywhere on your own. Do you think I’m crazy, Terranova?’

‘Don’t worry, Dez. I won’t talk to anyone. I’ll disappear into a hole and won’t come out until I’m healed. I promise. Let go of me, Dez.’

‘I like it when you’re meek and mild. Not another word. I’ll take you to a bonesetter, my little dove. Who’ll fix that cherub’s nose.’

Luís Terranova made one final attempt to escape when he saw the black car parked in the street and the stocky guy in an ashen hat and raincoat opening the back door. The two of them held on to him, laid him on the back seat and he stopped moving when he felt the barrel nuzzling under his ear. It was as if a bullet had gone into him without needing to be fired.

They beat him up on the far side of the lighthouse. The last thing he remembers hearing was a sound of his coming from outside. The crunching of teeth. Of his teeth. He then heard a voice from a state of unconsciousness, ‘You’ll never sing again, Terranova!’ And the first thing he heard when he woke up was actually a vision: the beams of light from the lighthouse.

‘Louder! Can’t hear you. Louder!’