Books Burn Badly

Nel blu dipinto di blu

KOREA DISAPPEARED FOR a year from the Western Quay. He came back shaven, without that showy hair he wore like a mane. Very serious. Having lost weight. Everything in him had got smaller, except for his eyebrows, which cast a shadow on the gullies of his face, as if time had rushed past, carrying with it the vegetation, the flesh on the terraces, the laughter mechanism. Not his teeth. But it looked as if they’d grown like unearthed dolmens. He was holding hands with María Medusa.

He remembered the last time he’d seen them, between planks of wood, with sacks of salt for a bed. She’d been sitting, caressing Korea’s crown, while he’d been lying with his head in the girl’s lap. They’d seemed to him very beautiful. He’d never felt the desire to paint a scene before and that’s what he’d thought he was doing when he looked at them. The stacks of wood framed the couple and at the same time filtered the light in slats like a large blind.

Close up, he’s able to appreciate the patches on his face better. Has the feeling he’s painted them before. Is familiar with the shades of flesh.

‘Hello, your honour,’ said Korea.

There was nothing threatening about him. His frank look was not one of revenge. Chelo would sometimes mark squares so that she could draw the oval of a face. Korea’s was like this. A serenity marked off by scars. Medusa stroked his ponytail with her smooth, white hand. A fibrous hand with long fingers and prominent veins, which caressed slowly, as if it was going to stay.

‘You had a record player, right?’

Gabriel was about to come out with a list of excuses. It wasn’t his. It belonged to his mother. It was portable, but very heavy. If he was caught bringing it down, he wouldn’t know what to say. And the judge. The judge can hurt you, Korea, don’t you realise? Wasn’t it enough? But he didn’t say anything. He nodded. Yes, they had a record player. In the Chinese Pavilion, Chelo used the radiogram, a piece of furniture that in Gabriel’s mind, he wasn’t sure why, went with the grandfather clock Grand Mother Circa. The record player had been a present from Leica for his sister. The result of one of his futuristic deals with the Wizard of Oz, as he called the owner of Hexámetro, in the field of publicity and window dressing. He’d heard his father comment that Leica was made of mercury. He thought he was referring to his ups and downs, but on this occasion he meant his ideas, as slippery as beads of mercury on a fork. It seemed the judge had forever been studying Leica and still wouldn’t be able to pick him out at an identity parade. He was a mutant, capricious creature, in his opinion, who gave the lie to his idea of a catalogue of personalities and behaviours. At court, he could tell who somebody was at the first coup d’œil, the first olhadela . . Leica had for some time been carried away by what he called the window revolution, which would transform the face of the city, create a new landscape, a second nature. The way had been prepared by a pioneer, Armando Liñeira, who’d had the sensational idea of parading models inside the shop window of La Palma. This was how things stood at the start of summer 1963, when Korea reappeared on the Western Quay and asked Gabriel to bring down the record player which Leica had given Chelo and he’d acquired. It worked on batteries. Why not? Why not bring it down? Why not give this hero of the Western Quay that pleasure? He’d even taken it the first Sunday they went to the beach in Santa Cristina. The day he waited for the girl to arrive who spoke chimpanzee language with a strange accent, had fair skin, greenish-brown freckles, was tall and lanky, but with hardly any breasts, despite the large, pink nipples.

‘Go and fetch it, why don’t you? And bring a record. “Volare” will do.’

He looked at Medusa and made her smile on one side of her face: Nel blu dipinto di blu.

When Gabriel and Zonzo came back with the equipment, he pointed to a space between the stacks of wood, where they’d so often played football. ‘Our very own dance hall. The Seixal, the Moderno, the Monelos Liceo!’ There were frayed, tattered clouds travelling slowly out to sea, as if heading back in search of a loom for some lost fabric.

It was the second to last time he saw them. They danced close together. Zonzo, as a joke, had deliberately chosen a record with opera. A soprano’s quavering voice. He checked the credits. Ach, ich fühl’s. But they didn’t care. They danced cheek to cheek, the song of their life. Medusa twirled on tiptoe, her heels lifting from the boat of her flat shoes, which gave the impression of drunken abandonment. The space created by the planks of wood moved with her. The rest, sea and sky, remained calm. Medusa’s long, shiny black hair fell like a mane over Korea’s pale, shaven head. Gabriel felt a shudder he hadn’t experienced before. To round off the composition, it needed Korea to kiss the woman’s disfigurement.

The last time he saw them was a few days later. It was a kind of anniversary and the crane operator let them play with the ball from the Diligent. At one point, the ball disappeared down a corridor of wood for export. One of them went to get it. Then another. They didn’t come back, so they all went. The operator started to get nervous. It wouldn’t have fallen into the sea? No, no. Impossible. And then Korea and Medusa came out from behind one of the furthest stacks of wood, as if they’d been away on holiday. She was pregnant. Carrying the Diligent’s ball in her belly.

Ramón Ponte laughed as well. The last laughter heard that summer of 1963 on the Western Quay, when Medusa spread her legs and gave birth to the ball, which bounced until coming to rest at the crane operator’s feet.

A police jeep careered around the corner. Ramón Ponte headed for the cabin with the historic football under his arm. The guards ordered the children back home. The port was not a playground any more. They should find somewhere else. The Caudillo’s yacht, the Azor, would be here soon. ‘As for you two, the chump with the ponytail and the disfigured whore, you can come with us. Show us your papers.’