Books Burn Badly - Manuel Rivas [106]
Eusebio sets off with his pointer’s scent to find the mirrors. He’s a crafty enemy. Transforms into the mountain. Has his own camouflage. He can be like a rock. In fact, he is that rock. His face resembles bark. His field of vision is not like the woodcock’s. He has a large blind spot. His field of vision is like the eagle’s. Not being able to see behind can be a disadvantage. But all he cares about is hunting precision. Getting as close as possible. Within range. Hitting the target. Bagging the guardian.
At the tip of a woodcock’s wing is a very fine feather. Of legendary quality for a painter’s brush, better than horsehair. A unique feather only the eyes and fingers of an expert can tell apart.
‘Amazing, Chelo! No hunter would give up such a trophy.’
Eusebio is wearing Ray-Ban sunglasses today, golden frames with dark green lenses. You can’t see his eyes. He smiles. He really does have sharp canines.
The 666 Chestnuts
Old lazybones, if he was in prison or a labour camp, he must have done something. I can see he’s got a limp. But even with a limp, a man’s got to bring home a wage. He can’t find work? Well, he should look in hell, God forgive me. They’ve been at it for hours, without a rest. What can they be talking about? There he is, like an equal, like a theologian with the priest. I don’t know why he permits it. Why he doesn’t shut him up with a spot of Latin. Though he knows Latin as well. He was Don Benigno’s altar boy and when he started losing his memory, there was Polka to prompt him during Mass. He’s not stupid, shame he got all those ideas. What does a poor man want ideas for? To complicate life, his own and his family’s.
To start with, when she opened the door, she expected there to be a scene. She knew why he’d come. To demand an explanation after the incident with that girl. Well, not such a girl any more, a young lady, and what a tongue! No, it wasn’t right, that punishment, all because of some chestnuts, but O, the girl, shouldn’t have been so rebellious, so offensive, quoting the Bible at the priest, who ever heard such a thing? The girl, we’ll call her that for now, came into the rectory’s enclosure with some other children to collect chestnuts. They’d been warned. One or two of them had received a beating. They ought to have known by now Don Marcelo had a special devotion to Our Lady of the Fist. He’d preached about it in church, when there was that dispute about common land, that he wasn’t a communist even when it came to chestnuts. And Polka in the Cuckoo’s Feather bar went and said if anyone was a communist, it was Christ, he didn’t even own the Cross, poor thing. Don Marcelo wasn’t Don Benigno. She knew that. He bore a grudge. Which may have had something to do with the girl’s punishment, I can’t say. The point is it was Sunday afternoon when they came to steal chestnuts. They reckoned on his taking a siesta. So they came in all confident, even put up a ladder to climb over the stone wall, which was high, pretty solid, with bits of glass along the top. But he can hear you thinking. He’d already suspected them of something during Mass. And he was waiting. He let them make a good pile of chestnuts. And when they’d finished, he turned up in his cassock, as vast as the night. Thundering out, ‘Once a thief, always a thief!’ And they all took to their heels, except for her. She just stood there and had the audacity to confront him, ‘Whoever finds a nut is allowed to keep it.’ Of course he couldn’t believe his ears. He grabbed her by the arm and shook her. ‘You’re a proper little madam! You threw a stone