Books Burn Badly

I’ll Just Go and See Who It Is

THEY’RE KILLING ALL his friends. One by one. He has to send them to a safe place.

‘Safe? Where’s a safe place?’

‘The land of wolves. That’s the safest place nowadays.’

When Pombo talked about the land of wolves, he knew what he was talking about.

From the beam in the shepherd’s hut, Curtis had hung a sack full of sand from the river. A gunny sack which, every time Curtis hit it, gave off a fine spray. Terranova encouraged him with that refrain ‘Yamba, yambo, yambambe!’ But sometimes he fell into a melancholy trance and watched the sack swing from side to side. Seeing him stuck in the station of sadness was something new, since Curtis thought he had a permanent spring in his mind protecting him from nostalgia. He’d sing to the sack. ‘The Moorslayer’s not working!’

Underneath the outer roof, the hut had a second ceiling of large cobwebs, not as resistant as gunny, but thick and well made, like a large canopy. ‘There are no spiders,’ said Terranova one night in the light of an oil lamp. ‘Have you seen a spider? Who’s making these webs, Curtis? They must be tireless spiders, but I haven’t seen any. One day, they’ll envelop us and gobble us up. We have to eat them first. Remember what Holando used to say about the French astronomer who only ate spiders? They’re the messengers of time. We can’t see them because they’re spinning with our eyes, with the threads of light. If we eat them, we might see the stars. Otherwise they’ll eat us. Or the bats will.

‘I should be eating skylark pâté, like the soloist of a French cathedral choir. As Picadillo once said, “Nightingale pie, ladies and gentlemen, for the singers.”’

He’s losing his mind. The spiders have got inside his head, thought Curtis. He left the hut. Was going to make him a present. To lift his spirits. He knew where there was food. In the roadside shrine, up at the crossroads. There was a stone relief showing prelates and pontiffs in the flames of purgatory. And a saint with scales for weighing souls, probably St Michael, whom he’d heard about in the Dance Academy’s kitchen from his mother and Pretty Mary. The weighing of souls would take place at the Last Judgement. How much would a good soul weigh? ‘The scales must be pretty accurate,’ said Milagres, ‘like the ones they use on Galera Street for spices.’ She added, ‘Souls must be like saffron. A gram is worth a fortune.’

In the niche, behind the little lights of burning wicks floating on oil, among flowers, he found the present. The dead didn’t care! Terranova was a spirit as well. He also needed an offering. His spirits needed lifting so that he could sing. Curtis didn’t mind what it was. What he wanted was for him to sing. Never to stop singing or pretending to be his trainer as he laid into the sandbag, the sack of time, with his fists.

‘Yamba, yambo, yambambe!’

He found food. More than on previous occasions. At the end of August, gusts of furtive, northerly wind were already scouring the fields of hay. Winter could be very long and swallow up autumn and spring. Eyes open in the back of his head, Curtis cautiously felt inside the niche and, aside from foodstuffs, found an unexpected treasure. A bottle of brandy and half a dozen Farias wisely wrapped in a cabbage leaf that had been tied with a straw plait. He smelt the tobacco inside the cabbage, that rude, precious package, and the mixture seemed to him strong and evocative, even though he didn’t smoke, or perhaps because of this, like the fragrance in the corridor leading from the Dance Academy’s sitting-room to the kitchen, where Milagres kept the factory of tastes and smells working round the clock, with the humble, captivating vapour of soup in the background, visible like a family heirloom. Sometimes he thought it couldn’t be. The girl with the budgies from 12 Panadeiras Street had never set foot in that kitchen. But it was the image of a bowl of cabbage soup, her anxiety as she eats it, that made the memory plausible. Milagres’ laugh, a laugh of popular satisfaction at the joy of eating, eating from hunger, of a rich girl, daughter of a cultivated man she admires, who’s turned up out of the blue, from across the border. Yes, it must be true. Can’t you hear them calling for her, Vitola, María, Vitola, thinking she’s hidden in the garden?

‘Look at her eat,’ says Milagres with pride. And with pleasure, ‘Poor girl, she must have been hungry!’

‘No,’ she replies. ‘I wasn’t hungry. It’s the smell of cabbage. Ever since I was little, I’ve always been desperate to try it.’

So that’s what it was. The fragrance of Milagres’ cooking crossing the border between two cities.

He didn’t smoke, but Terranova did. Despite having a small chest, he liked Havana cigars. They sometimes formed part of his payment in kind, his dockside business activities. He’d drink brandy whenever he could before singing. Two glasses better than one to clear his voice. Who’d have thought that today in far-flung Xurés, working as a shepherd in a mountain hut, he’d have good tobacco and brandy as well as food in abundance?

He unwrapped the cigars and savoured the smell. Took a swig of brandy. Looked at him with theatrical eyes, ‘Now I know who you are, Curtis, after so many years. The souls’ mafia boss! You kept that quiet! I’m at your service. I’ll be whatever you want me to be. Your butler. Your servant. Your shepherd. My captain of souls!’

The weather was changing. One morning, the swifts stopped drawing lines in the sky. Curtis crushed a furiously stinging horse-fly behind his ear and then didn’t feel another. The cicadas suddenly fell quiet and the mountains reverberated. The flocks and herds returned to their stalls.

As they were tucking into the salami from the roadside treasure, there came a knock at the door, a tender rap of the thunder’s knuckles.

It was the three seamstresses, each with a sewing machine on top of her head. They’d dropped in before. They travelled from village to village, carrying their little Singers. They stopped in a place for a while, depending on the jobs that needed doing. As well as a bed and food, they received a day’s wages in cash or kind.

The youngest and liveliest was called Silvia.

‘Let us in. The lightning is chasing our sewing machines and it’s pouring down!’

They knew how in this weather the Atlantic climbed up the mountain ridge. Scores of miles inland, the clouds carried a bellyful of sea. Which is why they had specks of Irish moss in their hair and smelt of salt.

Terranova stroked the back of a Singer. ‘I can sew as well,’ he said. ‘Lucho from Mount Alto taught me. He had a little theatre and used to dress up as an Andalusian woman. At night, he’d sew his polka-dotted costumes. He had a brother, a tough guy, who wouldn’t let him. This brother was a stevedore. So Lucho would sew his Andalusian costume at night, when his brother was down on the wharf. He sewed pretty well. Not like me.’

The seamstresses gave him a suspicious look. He could be making fun of them.

‘The thing Lucho taught me best was how to make rude gestures, including wearing the horn. He was very good at wearing the horn. He’d go down Independencia Street and the women who lived there would deliberately come out to watch him declare his allegiance to the Fraternity of St Cornelius. No one in Coruña wore the horn better than he did. Watch.’

Then he made them laugh. They’d never seen horns lifted in this way, with hands reversed, on buttocks, and cheeky fingers dancing obscenely.

They invite them to eat. Silvia becomes serious and steps forward. Appears to speak for all three of them. No, they don’t want to. They’re not hungry. They already ate on the way.

‘Then let’s have a dance,’ says Terranova. He’s feeling happy, replenished. ‘I’ll sing. You three can dance with him, let me tell you, with Hercules himself. Mystical roses, you have the opportunity to dance with a prince from Un-deux-trois, on a tour of the mountain ranges. Dance cheek to cheek, Spain’s perdition, no peeping!’

The light burning in your eyes

dawns if you open them,

as you close them

dusk seems to fall. .

When it’s Silvia’s turn, she comes up close, embraces him. The other two laugh, pretend not to watch. Terranova jokes, ‘Don’t get burnt!’ Changes tune. ‘What do you care, my love, if you no longer feel the same?’ Silvia talks to Curtis, whispers in his ear, ‘Don’t you dare touch the food in the shrine again.’

He looks at her in surprise. Why?

‘It’s not for the dead, it’s for my father. Understand? My father’s hunger is not like that of souls. It’s the hunger of a hungry fugitive. Do you understand or not?’

He understood all right. Terranova always said there was an invisible man in those parts. An ex-man. Who must be living in Barxas Wood. In the eye of the water. The trees had long, ancient beards. The Invisible as well.

Some guards once passed the cabin. In cloaks. The barrels of their guns sticking out. They were obviously in a hurry, but made enquiries. And then Terranova gave them the spiel. They were Portuguese, from across the border, hired as shepherds, when they were young they’d been offered to Our Lady of the Rock, the tallest stone staircase in the world, etc. Curtis was amazed by Terranova’s skill at accents, his palatal pattering speech.

‘Has the cat got his tongue?’

‘He’s dumb. Name’s Hercules. Lots of brawn and no brains.’

‘Lucky him,’ said the corporal. ‘Seen anybody about?’

‘Not a soul.’

‘If someone comes asking, don’t give him a thing, any bread or water.’

‘Even if he’s a Christian?’

‘He’s not a beggar, you know. He’s a fugitive. A bandit. A red. A descendant of the one in Anamán who shouted the poor don’t have and the rich won’t give.’

‘How can we tell?’

‘Because he doesn’t know how to curse. Whoever heard of a Christian that can’t curse?’

‘Change of partner. Dance by ear!’ announces Terranova. ‘If you see your father, tell him when he doesn’t receive alms, he has to curse. Blaspheme. They’re on to him because he speaks properly. Words are the most visible footprints.’

‘The thing is he doesn’t believe, so he doesn’t blaspheme. When he gets really worked up, the worst insult he comes out with is “Papist”.’

‘I could teach him to say, “I pick my teeth on a fragment of the Holy Cross”. I could make a list and leave it in the shrine. I had a thorough education. My mother’s a saint. He has to ask like a chaplain and curse when he doesn’t get. He believes in souls, doesn’t he? They say if you bump into a soul, you have to make the following request, “If you’re a soul from the other world, say what it is you want.” My mother and Curtis’ are always getting bogged down with souls, because they ask them what they want. The best thing is to send them packing, as priests do, “Christian soul, off to heaven with you!”’

When the storm had passed, the seamstresses put their sewing machines back on their heads and asked Curtis and Terranova to go with them for a bit.

‘We’re headed for Barroso,’ said Silvia. Adding mysteriously, ‘Come with us to see how goats fly!’

‘There are more crazy people in this world than in the world of spirits,’ said Terranova. ‘Lead on!’

Several hours later, Terranova asked, ‘Where are the flying goats?’

‘Not far to go now.’

Nightfall. The gloaming hour. They were on the edge of an inland cliff. In front of them, a huge marsh giving off mists. They’d clearly reached a limit. Then they heard bleats falling from the sky, spine-chilling cries that drew lines, wrote acrobatics two by two. Bleats joining in a serpentine drawing.

‘They’re woodcocks,’ said Silvia. ‘In these parts, they’re called goats.’

‘I never heard birds make such a sound.’

‘They make it not with the throat,’ said the seamstress, ‘but with their feathers. With the wind and their bodies.’

‘Louder!’ shouted Curtis. ‘Louder!’

‘He can speak!’ exclaimed Silvia in surprise.

‘He has his days,’ replied Terranova. ‘Only when he gets emotional.’

The weather changed from one day to the next. It wasn’t a summer storm any more. The clouds were full of stones and dark sea. They creaked and crushed brutally, with adult gearing, having lost the artifice of summer storms suitable for all ages. They had to think of returning. In mid-September, they’d take the sheep back to the village on the border. They’d still have time for a quick trip to the feast of the Acclaimer, the virgin who won’t keep quiet, music booming over the mountains all night. And then back into the Salgueiros’ basement, the house of the Stone Man and the Woman with the Black-beaded Rosary, to make baskets out of chestnut branches as the Stone Man had taught them. The village was good at this trade and the merchandise was sold at markets along the border. That was the deal. In summer, shepherds in the mountains; in winter, basket weavers hidden in the shade. Why was he called the Stone Man? Because he was made of stone. He’d sometimes move, stick his finger up his nose and pull out navelwort of the sort that takes root in between stones, on the edge of roofs. That’s what Terranova would say to make Curtis laugh. The Stone Man had navelwort up his nose, in his ears and all his body’s various orifices. ‘The point is they’re good folk. We don’t know what they think, but we know what they do. They fulfilled their side of the bargain. Gave us shelter. Never asked questions. How long’s it been, Curtis?’

On 2 August, the day the special train was due to leave for Caneiros, Terranova had been circling the station. Waiting for Curtis. He was sure he’d come, because Curtis had his ticket. Days before, he’d gone to the Academy during the night. Pombo half-opened the door and told him neither Curtis nor anybody else was in, he himself did not exist, and what Terranova had to do was stay in his mother’s house and not go wandering about, which was like wearing a cowbell around his neck. When he went to the station, he couldn’t get in. It was heavily guarded. He peered through the fence from Gaiteira. All the trains were still, a silence of engines that seemed to him resounding. The train to Caneiros never left. It transformed into a phantom locomotive. When they did start up again, all the convoys, somehow or other, were headed for war. Anyone who knew about trains realised they’d changed sound. The engines and tracks were still the same, but the sound had changed.

He found Curtis the day they burnt books. Following Pombo’s plan, they finally boarded a train, but this time as corpses, inside coffins, using real dead people’s identities. As far as Ourense. From there, by road. The driver stopped in Maus de Baños at night. Which is when they dropped their coffins into the River Limia.

‘You’re dumb,’ their contact said to Curtis. ‘You say no to everything. It doesn’t matter what they ask you. Unless they say Guiné. If they say Guiné, you say yes. It’s a code, see? You,’ he said to Terranova, ‘you’re a gypsy.’

‘A gypsy?’

‘A Portuguese gypsy.’

‘All right then.’

Curtis was reading his Popular Guide to Electricity in the smoky light of a carbide lamp. The printed lines trembled in the shadows, as if marching over the yellow surface towards the charred margins, telling a capnomancy, the matter of an ancient divination. The flickering light and spirals of smoke, reflected against the book, appeared to rise from the pages and not from the carbide’s death throes. The Stone Man slept next to the hearth. The woman’s litany sounded like a radio. Domus aurea. Broadcasting at night. Foederis arca. Once he’d heard her sigh over the airwaves. Janua coeli. Salgueiros would die if they didn’t bring the light. Stella matutina. At this point, the Stone Man stirred, opened and shut his eyes. It really was like this, thought Terranova. The woman’s voice was a radio, a connection he’d found. He listened to it as when he used to search for tangos on the crane operator’s Atwater Kent at night and out came uncertain voices. This is how he discovered Paul Robeson. At times, he seemed to fade, to go, to leave them behind. At others, he sounded stronger, with renewed intensity, and you could light a match in his breath. Rosa mystica, Turris Davidica, Turris eburnea. But there was always a distance, as if she were one thing, her voice another, and she also were listening. The woman stopped praying, stopped telling the beads of her rosary. Her fingers, however, kept going. They left the jet and started making beads out of breadcrumbs. One to start with, slowly, it looked as if it would be the only one. Then more and more quickly, small spheres filling the blue and white squares of the oilskin tablecloth. Terranova copied her. The two of them rolling stars. Something had changed in her as their departure approached. She’d thrown off her mourning. Let down her hair. When they went back to the city, he’d send her an Atwater Kent. With batteries and accumulators.

She lifted her eyes, which were damp, glistening. Her shaky hand felt under the table. A rosary of years to make that movement. Finally to whisper an invitation.

‘The dogs are barking. Shall we go and see who it is?’