Books Burn Badly

by Unknown

  can save hands.

  He read:

  CRUSADE

  I the warrior thank you,

  my God,

  for crippling me.

  I was a good shot,

  but you, Lord,

  direct a bullet with your eyes:

  in the rifle’s soul,

  an hallelujah caws.

  Commander Dez would recite the poem ‘Crusade’ that evening at a literary gathering in Rita Angélica’s home. Everyone was amazed. Somebody had just dedicated a piece of nonsense to Christopher Columbus. They were all sitting around in armchairs decorated with chintz. They knew he was forthright. They still remembered the day he read Pemán’s ‘Beast and the Angel’, which sounded like a further declaration of war. But this poem . . .

  They were stunned. Rita suggested, ‘It’s very different from your previous work.’

  You could say that again! He read:

  CONCENTRATION CAMP (I)

  Your rays

  this beautiful Sunday morning

  are like a divine roving eye

  moments before the attack.

  He read:

  CONCENTRATION CAMP (II)

  You’re like the house-cat, Lord,

  which doesn’t go out to hunt,

  but makes corpses

  to play with.

  He read:

  BURNING BOOKS

  As the fruit falls,

  the emptiness is not left alone.

  Why else

  this itching of the eyes?

  He lifts the receiver. Dials an internal number. He can’t picture the visitor. Can’t see his face. He’s too anxious. Tells his secretary, ‘The guy waiting in a sailor’s hat and coat, don’t let him leave.’

  ‘Why are you so angry with God?’

  The cough that exploded violently from his chest, which Anceis suppressed by placing a handkerchief over his mouth, didn’t make him any weaker. Rather it suggested he had little to lose. Dez the censor finally understood the unusual precision, the physiological composition, of certain passages. Like this one from ‘The Fisherman Remembers the Matchstick-maker’:

  The ball of spit won’t come out,

  strikes against glass-paper lips

  and ignites like failed phosphorus

  in the white Nova Scotia night.

  After the coughing fit, he was again strong enough to speak.

  ‘What do you think? I censured myself before coming here,’ said Aurelio Anceis suddenly. ‘Imagine a verse that simply reproduced the legend on official coins: “Caudillo of Spain by the grace of God”. This excess is overt blasphemy. The total lack of God is an excess and excess, a terrible lack. Which leads to a second verse, an elementary question: “Could I speak to the Boss, please?”’

  ‘You did well to censure that,’ said Dez ironically. ‘It would have been unpublishable. But the sense of unease, the constant allusions to defeat. This poem entitled “News of Defeat” . . . You could have found another date that wasn’t the 1st of April. You discourage the victors, so imagine the losers. This other one that speaks of the 18th of July. You should be more careful. Coming here. Talking about it.’

  Aurelio Anceis’ face had a knotty seriousness. He didn’t move and his breathing, a loud, inner bubbling, sounded like that of someone living inside him. His eyes, half-closed, seemed to have landed on gaps in his rough skin, like shiny beetles attracted by his elongated eyelashes.

  ‘In the poem about a doris, there’s some respite at least: “The lonely fisherman constructs a place with his oars . . . Constructing somewhere with a lonely fisherman from Halifax.”’

  ‘You think? Do you know what a doris is?’

  ‘I do now. I asked. Thanks to you. Poetry’s mission is also to inform.’

  Dez the censor stood up and went over to the window. He referred to the labourers, all the people in the street, ‘Everybody keeps a safe distance. Everybody except for the poets. Those who reveal the inner sanctuary, get to say the unspeakable.’

  Aurelio Anceis watched his hand moving like a baton.

  ‘They’re unaware,’ Dez continued, ‘of a metaphysical change in history. From being to time, and from time to being. Off with time!’ He rubbed his hands. A way of applauding himself, thought Anceis. And then lamented, ‘They think I’m talking about watchmaking. Makes no difference. Your poems, Mr Anceis, are extraordinary!’

  He fell silent. Looked at him. He was waiting for some kind of reaction. That was a real compliment, thought Anceis. But he didn’t say anything.

  ‘In short, I’ll do whatever it takes to publish them.’ And he added jokingly, ‘If necessary, we’ll move heaven and earth!’

  Then Anceis had a sense of foreboding. Something that sprang up in his intestines like a biological warning and affected his poems. Suddenly the reason he was there ceased to be relevant. He held his sailor’s hat, turning it slowly, not always in the same direction, but like someone steering. He stood up, put on his hat and made to take back the original. Dez got there first. ‘Extraordinary.’ He opened the folder and read an extract he didn’t know, but pretended he did. He recited the last bit as if he knew it off by heart.

  Silent woman of Godthab,

  I can hear the purple pigment of your eyes,

  the thread of your murmur

  linking a long, luminous word I don’t understand.

  Blessing on the kayak leading this needle through the sheets of ice.

  ‘Mysterious,’ said Dez. ‘There’s something moving.’

  Anceis watched him silently.

  ‘Godthab?’ asked the censor. ‘Somewhere to do with God?’

  ‘It’s a port in Greenland.’

  Not wanting to be subjected to a poetic interrogation, he volunteered a few bare details.

  ‘Most of the cod-fishing fleet refuels in St Pierre, St John’s or Nova Scotia. I spent time on a ship that went a little further, to the Davis Strait, on the edge of the Arctic Polar Circle. We stopped over in Godthab.’

  ‘Just once?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘So the Godthab woman really existed? Was she an Eskimo?’

  ‘She was an Inuit. They say Inuit. It means person. Eskimo is an eater of raw flesh. Inuit is a person.’

  ‘What happened? I imagine you can say. Did you take her on board ship?’

  Anceis became thoughtful. One hand explored the other. Dez couldn’t know, but the old sailor was slotting breadcrumbs between his fingers. They headed and cleaned the cod, using canvas gloves. The fish from the sea were covered in slime that filtered through the canvas and, with the cold, caused cracks around the finger-joints, which were very difficult to heal and withstand. The best way to avoid the fingers rubbing together was to sleep with breadcrumbs between them.

  But these were intimate, insignificant details. What did they matter to this bureaucrat who wouldn’t let go of his texts, whom books had to ask for permission to exist and who was suddenly on heat because of the Godthab woman?

  Aurelio Anceis said, ‘All the information you need is in the poem. It’s a poem with a lot of information.’

  And added, ‘Sorry, but I have to leave.’

  The Bramble Sphere

  Ferns were her merchandise. Green ferns. She carried a huge bundle.

  ‘Half the mountain, my dear.’

  She sold them at Muro Fishmarket as a way of bedding and protecting the fish that were exported in pinewood boxes. In the case of women carrying ferns on top of their heads, there was a strange coincidence. They brought the largest burden and took away the fewest coins. One day, Lola, painted by Chelo, made some extra income. She came with the whole mountain on top of her head. On St John’s Eve, she brought posies containing seven aromatic herbs. They were soaked in water overnight for the healing bath of the morning, since this herbal water washed inside and out. The posy was then kept at home and a year later, dried out, thrown on to the St John bonfires. Which is why there were three paintings by Chelo Vidal of that woman f
rom Orro. Woman with Ferns. Woman with St John Posies. And Woman with Bramble Sphere.

  If you calmly study the woman carrying ferns, who looks the most humble, she eventually acquires a noble bearing. As if she held a large, natural basket, a mysterious heart of the forest, a green monstrance. Talking of wild plants, it was she who one day said, ‘For me, brambles make the best rope.’

  ‘Brambles?’

  ‘They’re as flexible as string and as tough as leather. It’s just a shame about the prickles.’

  Chelo was stunned by her description. She’d always thought of brambles as aggressive and intractable, only letting up during the blackberry season. Even then, you had to pick the fruit as if your fingers were a blackbird’s beak.

  A blackbird hopped between Chelo’s head and the Woman with Ferns.

  ‘Of course life is full of blackberries and prickles,’ said Lola, the Woman with Ferns. ‘It’s a brier from start to finish.’

  This conversation gave rise to what today is one of Chelo Vidal’s most famous works. In many reviews, it is given as the pinnacle of a new symbolism, being in this sense the most direct painting in the series ‘Women Carrying Things on Top of Their Heads’. But this doesn’t stop it being one of her most enigmatic works because of what some have termed ‘the unsettling calm’ of the Woman with Bramble Sphere.

  ‘Is it possible to make a ball of brambles?’

  ‘Why not? You just have to scrape off the prickles and weave the stems together.’

  ‘No, I mean without leaves, but with prickles.’

  The ball of brambles resembles an armillary sphere. The woman in the portrait, like many others who carry weights, has a cloth crown to support the weight, but in her case the cloth is a silvery grey and really does look like a crown, perhaps because what it supports is more overtly symbolical. From a distance, it resembles a sphere. From close up, the coarse skein is like a labyrinth, made more dramatic by the prickles. The portrait would be very severe were it not for the gesture of the woman looking to her left, slightly foreshortened, half smiling, thought Chelo, and unaware of the weight she’s carrying, as if it were an extravagant hat. Why’s she smiling?

  ‘What’s so funny?’ asked Chelo.

  ‘It’ll sound strange to you, but I was thinking about the day of my first communion. We were all dressed up, looking very smart. The best we could do, by borrowing things or whatever, but smart. The boys in a suit and tie, like little men, and us in white. An aunt of mine worked as a maid in a house in Sigrás and the lady of the house lent me a tiara with a tulle veil. So there we were, kneeling in front of the altar, at the most solemn moment, waiting for the Sacred Form, when I went and glanced at Daniel. He was like a squirrel, never stayed still. It was funny seeing him looking so formal, with cropped hair and hands held together in prayer. He suddenly looked back, without losing his composure, and . . .’

  The Woman with Bramble Sphere pursed her lips. Blinked. Tears of laughter were bubbling up in her eyes. It was Chelo’s turn to smile in the face of mystery.

  ‘What happened with Daniel?’

  ‘He moved his ears!’

  ‘His ears?’

  ‘Yes, madam. He moved them as if they were wings. He could do that, move them without having to touch them. What he called “doing the ding-dong”. But only I saw him do it that day. The day of our First Communion. In church. That day, he did it just for me.’

  This is the secret of why the Woman with Bramble Sphere is smiling in Chelo Vidal’s painting. Because she can see Daniel beating his pointed ears like wings.

  Nothing more disturbing than the following painting.

  That of the Woman Carrying a Secret. It was not known what was in that basket covered with a cloth. The cloth’s contours suggested small, irregular spheres. But the strange thing was the cloth itself. A black cloth. Nobody covered their merchandise in Santo Agostiño or Leña Field with a black cloth. Their head, OK. But never their merchandise.

  ‘You’ve painted me with a bad look,’ said the Woman Carrying a Secret.

  ‘No, it’s not bad. That’s the way you look. It’s fine. Adds a touch of mystery.’

  ‘Not like that, it doesn’t. I may be a bit cross-eyed, but not that much. And it’s one thing to be like that for a moment, another to be like that for the rest of your life. Paintings are for life. I don’t know why you want to make me look cross-eyed.’

  ‘That is your look. That is beauty. The real thing, emotion.’

  ‘Well, it looks to me as if those eyes you painted aren’t working properly when they should be beautiful.’

  ‘In those eyes can be seen all that you contain inside,’ responded Chelo passionately.

  ‘I’d rather nothing could be seen.’

  She’s now the Woman with Lowered Eyelids.

  ‘Is that better?’

  ‘Much better.’

  Gabriel remembers passing her on the back staircase. He’d often use it to reach the kitchen more quickly. Neves always had a surprise for him. A little beakful, as she called it. He bumped into the Woman in Mourning, whose head-cloth matched the cloth on her basket. She seemed very pleased. When she saw him, she pulled back the cloth and gave him a handful of her secrets.

  The Unfalling Leaves

  His name’s Antón, I think, but what stuck in my mind was what Mr Sada said: this country doesn’t deserve its poets, look how it treats them, working as building labourers, carrying sacks of Portland cement. Every time I see a man with a sack on his back, I think of him. Of my poet. My Portland.

  That day, her wish to find him in the painter’s house was fulfilled. She was taking their clothes. On the way from Castro to Elviña, she plucked a few white roses and sprigs of mint and fennel. To give the clothes a nice smell.

  Neves received her in the hallway. She heard voices coming from the more open side of the sitting-room, what they called the Chinese Pavilion, and, being on good terms with the maid, she let herself go a little, just enough to see the group of people. All of them deep in thought. Each looking in a different direction. Listening. To him recite. And she still had time to hear about the leaves that don’t fall in San Carlos Gardens, they burn, that’s what he said, on a low heat, at the top of the elms. And he said something about the hanging clusters’ spectral elegance. But she wasn’t quite sure about this.

  She went there that afternoon. And others.

  In San Carlos Gardens, at the top of the elms, she did indeed see a few coppery leaves that hadn’t fallen. She knew there were some trees that didn’t shed their old leaves until they’d grown new ones. But this was very different. In the whole remarkable plantation, the branches’ austere elevation, fat charcoal markings in the sky, ending in a filigree of twigs, shoots and buds, pure, unsullied lines, well, up there were these copper-coloured leaves on a low heat, burning at dusk without being consumed.

  It was one of the happiest moments in her visits to the city. It was unthinkable that she, of all people, should be able to see the black elms’ unfalling winter leaves in the so-called Romantic Garden. Not only did they not fall, they burnt in the plantation’s sober lattice. The more you looked at them, the more they burnt. She was far away, but she could feel the heat on her cheeks.

  So when she came back, many years later, one of the first things O did was go and see the unfalling leaves in San Carlos Gardens.

  But O’s here right now. She’s twelve years old and is starting to go to the river to wash. She likes the river, but not washing so much. At the crossroads, one road leads to school, another to the river. If she didn’t have to wash, she’d always choose to go to the river. Which is where she’s in the process of discovering the water figures.

  Polka suffers as a result of ignorance. Yesterday he was very hurt because he rode side-saddle on Grumpy, the donkey that carries the clothes Olinda and I wash, and some people had a go at him for not riding normally, like a man. All because of ignorance. The animal suffers less if you sit like a woman. Everything that itches is because of
ignorance. Ignorance itches. That’s what Polka thinks. He used to have a lot of friends he could talk to against ignorance. One of them was Arturo, Galicia’s lightweight champion. I know there are rumours, some say Arturo could be my Dad. He was killed before I was born, but if he’s in the water, if the river brought him to me, maybe there’s something in it. They loved him a lot. He always had his gloves and books.

  ‘But if he was a boxer, didn’t he have to hit people?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Polka. ‘But boxing isn’t quite the same as hitting. With his boxer’s hands, he would write in a magazine called Brazo y Cerebro. In Fontenova, he and others founded a cultural association with a library called Shining Light in the Abyss. It had a glass sign showing a sun. It’s so cold in Fontenova it must have helped having a sign like that.’

  ‘And what happened?’

  ‘They killed him like Christ. There was no war here, girl, what they call a war was a hunt and they hunted him down. Before he died, he managed to write on a piece of paper, “The worshippers of Christ make a new Christ every day.”’

  ‘What happened to the sign with the sun?’

  ‘They smashed it.’