Books Burn Badly

The Prickles of Words

HE DIDN’T REMEMBER when he started getting tongue-tied, but he remembered the day his father noticed. It was the first time he’d received the warning, something inside him had said here comes a word with problems. A word dragging its own skeleton. A spicule without a sponge. A mushroom in the shade. A wounded crab. This warning, this alert, caught him by surprise in front of his father. He couldn’t let the word out, he felt its traction, its attempt to climb, its prickles, but couldn’t let it out because it was crippled, maimed, trembling and possibly beside itself.

‘What is it, Gabriel?’

The way he asked. The way he looked. A catastrophe. Everything was happening not inside him, but on his father’s face. He knew the fear he had of trembling or precipitate words was as nothing compared to the fear his father’s fear gave him. And he sensed his father’s fear was fear of what they’d say in the city. Occasionally, very rarely, he’d heard him say this. ‘What’ll they say, what’ll they think in the city?’ But when he referred to the city, he wasn’t talking about the whole city. Gabriel knew by now what his father meant when he referred to the city.

‘What were you going to say, Gabriel?’

He shook his head.

His father insisted. Rationalised what had happened. His ears tried to remember. Not one, not two, but more. Gabriel was stammering. His son. A child who was. . perfect. That was the word. In short. He wanted to make sure it wasn’t a nightmare.

‘You were going to say something, Gabriel. Go on. What is it? Are you not well? Say something. Speak. Tell me about the trolleybus.’ His imaginary journeys with Chelo, his mother. Every Tuesday, they’d depart from Porta Real. The red, double-decker buses had been brought from London, second-hand. What fun it was to go upstairs, to sit in the first row, the large front window like a screen in the city’s real cinema. ‘Where did you go yesterday? To Montevideo. Come on, say Montevideo. You sometimes go to Lisbon, don’t you? Lisbon’s easy to say. Say Lisbon.’

‘Lisbon.’

‘That’s good, Gabriel. Another city you go to is Paris. Let’s see if you can say Montevideo, Lisbon, Paris, Berlin, Barcelona. It’s just a joke. A game. I know you can say all of this. But say it to me now.’

‘Montevideo, Lisbon, Paris. .’

Things always happened somewhere. On the beach this summer, he’d learnt to dive. A little. But for him these first experiences were like underwater journeys. He couldn’t believe it when he opened his eyes and saw Chelo’s feet, enormous under the water, the toes like rock creatures with pearly shells. Now he’d like to dive and go between his father’s legs. He felt the presence of Grand Mother Circa, the grandfather clock, behind him. It had come from Cuba, like the wooden horse Carirí, and been a wedding present from Chelo’s father. He’d always end up there when he started to walk. He’d use it as a support, watch the pendulum. It was a fantastic creature, alive, with its own way of speaking day and night. He used to dream something was happening and this is where he’d hide. The grandfather clock leant against the room’s central pillar. The sunlight coming in from the balcony — it was a winter’s day, but there was a magnificent sun, a ‘Catholic sun’, someone at court had said — drew a dividing line with the pillar’s shadow. So Grand Mother Circa was also, in its own way, a light mechanism. He listened to it up close. He listened to it inside. It calmed the words and ordered them for him. This time, they’d gone on a boat to the Xubias. They’d gone up and down the beach, from the jetty to the estuary channel. On the sandbank, from a neighbouring dune, they could see the two waters fighting it out. Blue and green. They then climbed some rocks to reach a chalet. He tripped several times. Chelo took his hand and helped him up that steep shortcut. The house was closed, except for one of the shutters. How strange. Look. It was a house full of books. Inhabited by books. A house without books must be sad. Even sadder a house of books without people. Brambles and roses intertwined on the pergola. He protested, ‘What are we doing? Why did we come here?’

‘It’s a boat-house. Isn’t it beautiful?’

‘Where did you go, Gabriel?’

‘To Santa Cristina.’

His father’s concern abruptly switched objective. Abandoned him to focus instead on this other place.

‘To Santa Cristina? To that beach in this weather?’