Books Burn Badly

Jolies Madames!

THERE CAME A time in Chelo’s work when women entered the painting. Or was it the other way round?

She gave the tiredness of bodies a rest.

Sometimes the feet were left dancing and she painted them with dots and filigree, the ankles as well, as if putting on embroidered tights.

One leg from Chantilly, courtesy of Jacques Fath, another from Camariñas, courtesy of Chuchú.

Apart from moments of melancholy introversion, she was a cheerful woman. She liked to assume the frivolity of reading out far-fetched phrases in women’s magazines or newspaper fashion supplements, which got bigger and bigger, especially on Sundays. New clothes and hairstyles to brighten up the papers.

‘White cotton piqué with black dots!’

She paused. Stood up. Stretched her arms towards the sun and proclaimed to the begonias, ‘Jolies Madames!’

One of the women entering and leaving the painting was the knitter.

‘What I find most difficult,’ she said, ‘are children’s socks. My mother’s pretty good at making socks. We never wore them. When she was pregnant, she started knitting embroidered socks for doctors’ children in Compostela. Making strips of entredeux, as we used to call it, in French. We’re three sisters, each with her own father. The fathers were brothers, three blonds who turned up one day, looking like Vikings around a camp-fire. The eldest died at sea, and Mum married the next brother. The second drowned in another shipwreck, and Mum married the third. Who was my father. Mum said, “Each time I got married, I married the one I liked.” As a girl, she found a crucifix on the beach, being lapped by the sea. There was only the upright, the arms had disappeared. It must have been pretty ancient since the wood had been petrified, moulded and converted by the sea, like a bone or shell, and the body, instead of breaking off, as presumably had happened to the arms, had merged with the sacrificial wood, hinged like a shell, as if handcrafted like that, and Christ was covered in a layer of limestone and nacre from the valves, but more surprising was the hair he’d grown, which to start with they thought was a clump of seaweed, since it was all entangled in siren’s string, a bunch of water-crowfoot, Irish moss and sea lettuce, but when they pulled, they saw the seaweed stuck, was entangled in real hair. They cut it with scissors and it grew again. I saw this with my own eyes.’

‘What? You saw hair grow? You’re more likely to see grass grow.’

‘What she meant was. .’

‘Chelo, you act like a magnet for all the spirits of Galicia.’

And then, addressing the priest, ‘She’s like that, Don Munio. An epicentre.’

‘It may be true,’ said the priest. ‘The hair, I mean. The Christ of Finisterre was the same. They used human hair and it seemed to carry on growing. The ones from the sea were called Protestant crosses. There were virgins as well, images that arrived by sea with hair that grew. Wooden virgins with real virgins’ hair. When I was ordained and sent to that parish. .’

‘You didn’t stay long, Don Munio. Such a pretty place. The rectory overlooking the sea.’

‘No, I didn’t stay long. I’m not a typical Catholic priest. I’m ambitious. As you are with art. Spiritually ambitious.’

Gabriel had told her what Father Munio had said recently, one morning he got the time wrong, ‘I cannot and will not tolerate my children being late.’

‘My children? Is that what he calls all the boys and girls?’

‘No. It was the first time he said it. I was really annoyed. Some of them started giggling.’

‘Don’t pay any attention.’

Another strange thing Father Munio said to Gabriel, ‘When I see you on your own, I’ll whisper a repertoire in your ear.’

‘A repertoire? Is that what he said?’

‘I suppose now you’re going to tell us it’s true what happened to the Metro lion,’ said the judge, enjoying the taste of irony.

‘The Metro lion?’

‘The lion in films, father. An informer of Chelo’s, one of her spirits, told her the lion was on Death Coast, not on the screen. Was one of the wild animals the Nil was carrying to Dublin Zoo. The ship sank and lots of the fauna swam all the way to Traba Beach. Including the lion. Right, Chelo? You’ll be wondering what happened to them. Well, they were frightened by the dogs and sat down to wait for the consul.’

‘You didn’t tell it well,’ said Chelo. ‘That’s what I get for giving toothless here something to eat.’

They pretended still to be in love. Tried to find a balance. For a time, she played jokes on him, which the judge classified as dangerous. One example remained with him, the day some friends they’d arranged to meet knocked at the door, which was ajar, and she shouted from the sitting-room, ‘Just a minute, we’re making love!’ She was in fact alone in the sitting-room. Painting. And she shouted this. The judge was in the hallway, heard Chelo shout they were making love and the chuckles that followed. He remembers the word that came into his head was ‘indescribable’, a word that related to him, to the expression on his face.

‘You see, Father Munio, we’ve run out of wedding cake!’

The priest was enjoying himself, as in a skit, and surprised them with one of his modern metaphors, ‘Come, come! Your marriage is like a pair of scissors. One blade can’t function without the other.’

‘How very touching, Father,’ said Chelo, recovering from her astonishment. She knew Father Munio was primarily interested in the judge. He was the target, an influential and suitable candidate to join the Opus. She said, ‘Well, you should know she worked with three pairs of scissors.’

‘Who did?’

‘The knitter’s mother. With three brothers. And she had a daughter with each of them. Which makes three sisters.’

Chelo deliberately misquoted the knitter’s mother.

‘She married three times and said, “I liked them all, but the third was my favourite.”’

The judge laughed, ‘A magnet, Chelo. You’re a magnet for Galicia’s spirits.’