Books Burn Badly - Manuel Rivas [102]
‘Badajoz, 14th of August 1936.’
And he’d add mysteriously, ‘Yagüe. Now that was a good one!’
Whenever the ball fell in Badajoz, didn’t make it past the hole on to other scenes of conquest, he heard the refrain, ‘Now that was a good one!’ Even when an elated Ren was holding the game, it was still a sombre exclamation. Something that stuck to the city’s name like an involuntary accent. It was, after all, a mistake. It would be many years before Gabriel found out what had happened in that hole the ball sometimes landed in. Before he discovered that hole in a game of skill contained a bullring piled high with corpses, in a warlike corrida where people were the victims. The ball was always the same, but when Ren had the game and was tensing his muscles to direct the ball, it didn’t always carry on, but sometimes rolled its own way, fell in the hole labelled Badajoz and like an echo triggered that admiring ‘Now that was a good one!’ which the boy perceived as a rare distortion of meaning, since if the ball fell in the hole, you had in fact played badly.
Years later, Sofia, a love of Gabriel’s, also failed to understand the look of amazement, panic even, she saw in him when she used such a colloquial expression as ‘Now that was a good one!’ It was something trivial. She didn’t even remember what they were talking about, she was so surprised by his reaction. She had to get used to this man who had a tense physical relationship, was permanently on edge, with words. Who lived in a state of extreme alert with language. She couldn’t see what he was seeing. The GNM game. The direction of the ball. Badajoz. The bullring. Inspector Ren’s exclamation, ‘Now that was a good one!’
To start with, she thought the relationship wouldn’t work. He moved between silence and an entomologist’s precision when he used a word and she soon discovered there were lots that, for one reason or another, caused him commotion or conflict. He seemed to see the words. He attributed this extreme precaution to a particular phase of his training to be a judge. Anyone could betray the meaning of words. Starting with a writer. But not a judge.
‘Even when it’s a question of love?’
His eyes scribbled. Before opening his mouth, he’d sketch out what he was going to say, its implications, in his mind. He’d even move his fingers over a surface. Search instinctively for a blank sheet of paper.
‘What you say is a state of emergency.’
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,