Books Burn Badly

The Arrest

IT’S A HOT morning. Santos, the policeman, heads for the Tachygraphic Rose academy and finds it closed. A few pupils are standing around in confusion. It’s the first time this has happened. ‘Closed Owing to Bereavement’. They expect some such sign. But suddenly the door opens and Dr Montevideo comes out. It was he who opened. The one who was bedridden. Something extraordinary must have happened, something terrible or supernatural. The man exiled in his own room since he returned from his other exile ten or so years previously. They gaze at the ghost. Perhaps it’s only a shell, empty on the inside. They’ll soon find out when he turns around to lock the door. But no. On the contrary, he’s very robust, not astral at all. A body, the memory of a body, wearing a coat and the coat’s memory. When he entered the house, intending not to reappear, it was winter. This helped him. He entered like a shepherd driving a flock of dry leaves. Now the sea-blue coat gives him the air of a sailor emerging from a boat-house in another hemisphere, another season. He looks at the plaque: ‘The Tachygraphic Rose, 2nd Floor’. Wipes the brass with his sleeve. ‘The best polish for cleaning metals is and always will be Love. Love Polish.’ An advertisement he remembers from his childhood. Another one, important for a reason that’s become obscured, is the definition of Portland cement. The relationship between poetry and publicity is paradoxical. A verse quickly grows old when it takes the form of an advert, but a slogan that’s presented as a poem lives on. For example. . No, now is not the time to institute such proceedings. He wipes the plaque with his sleeve, a sea cloth. Says, ‘Go back to the jungle, children. Classes are suspended.’

‘Why, Mr Montevideo?’

The doctor looks back. His eyes rest on the policeman Paúl Santos. Speechless, shocked, suddenly fully aware of the outcome.

‘What is it, Mr Montevideo?’ asks Stringer.

‘Nothing you can publish,’ replies Héctor Ríos. ‘A man descended into hell.’

Having said this, he heads quickly towards the pedestrian crossing. The road is flat, but he views each step as if it’s an uphill climb.

‘Has something happened to Miss Catia?’ Stringer manages to ask out loud. He’s conscious by now that the fact of asking could not only reveal a truth, but worsen it.

‘She was arrested last night. They’ve taken her, Balboa.’

Stringer reiterates a long forgotten question, ‘Why?’

‘They say they arrested someone who had a photo of her. They searched his house and apparently found a photo of Catia with the name ‘Judith’ on the back. Nonsense. They then came here and turned everything upside down. They even tore my mattress and confiscated my papers. A Dramatic History of Culture. To see what it said. I told them I’d written it. They wouldn’t listen. I was of no interest. They didn’t want to arrest me, I think they thought I was too old. One kept looking at my teeth. I told him I had a new set which I’d lent to a friend working as a second-hand car salesman.’

He points across the road. ‘For further information, ask the. . lawyer.’ Stringer turns to look at Paúl Santos, who’s typing inside, has a problem, he’s hit two different keys and the bars are entangled.