Books Burn Badly - Manuel Rivas [109]
They were there the whole night. The soldiers eagerly sifting each clod, examining each pebble, poking in holes.
‘Here’s something hard. Oh no, they’re bones!’
‘Bones? An animal’s, I suppose.’
‘Well, what else are they going to be?’ said the big guy in charge of the squad. He then looked at the hole as if the question he’d asked were now turning over soil.
With the thirst for gold came dawn. Painting witnesses on the horizon. Men on bikes and mopeds, women carrying the first light of day. The whole hilltop between the rocks of Ara Solis riddled with holes. The idea was to kill at night. ‘We’re out of time,’ said one of the squad of soldiers and it wasn’t clear whether he meant for digging or killing. The point is they ordered them back on to the lorry and so it was that Polka went to prison. Having dug his own grave, first straight and then sideways.
‘I’ve got a job for you, Crecente,’ said the parish priest. He hadn’t stopped turning the matter over since punishing O. It was obvious he felt remorse. ‘A job for you. With two conditions. No more pagan processions with the lame cardinal and monumental women during Carnival. And no more competing with me by preaching in taverns. I know you do it well, you make people laugh, but it’s time for you to shut up, Polka. That’s the way it goes. You can’t be priest,’ he said ironically. ‘Verger’s taken. That leaves gravedigger. What do you think? As a gravedigger and a bagpiper, you’ll get by, so to speak . . .’
‘The man was very chatty,’ Polka informed Olinda.
King Cintolo’s Cockroach
It had to be said properly, not any old how. ‘Acetylsalicylic acid’.
‘Come on, Pinche, repeat it.’
‘Acetylsacilytic acid.’
‘Not “sacilytic”! Salicylic.’
Polka believed if you wanted to speak well, you had to be able to say ‘acetylsalicylic acid’. An invention which was to be found in nature, like all others. It just had to be rescued from invisibility, as music is sound rescued in bagpipes. One of Polka’s set phrases, though he was careful when to use it. Everything of importance had been rescued from invisibility. And aspirin was no exception. The best proof of the virtues of aspirin was in river rats if only you could see them. They were always healthy, clean, with shiny skin. Why? Because they gnawed at willow roots. And what was in a willow?
‘Acetylsacilytic acid!’
‘Salicylic!’
O liked the theory of invisibility, but not rats. They didn’t strike her as a model of healthy beauty. She always tried to have a stone to hand in case they showed up along the river. But one day a rat stared at her from the other side, the first time she saw its eyes, and O came to the same conclusion as Polka. She decided it was beautiful. An unsettling beauty, as with all animals that live by the river and try not to be seen, like the praying mantis, easily confused with the grass, or water boatmen, which live on the surface of the water without ever getting wet, darning river marks with their long, slender legs. According to Polka, the most interesting creatures also formed part of what was not immediately visible. And this was the solemn moment when he would contribute his own discovery.
‘No,’ Olinda would say, losing her patience. ‘That’s enough of that!’
‘Where’s the harm in it?’
O and Pinche would laugh. They’d heard it many times before. They already knew that the prettiest creature on earth was the cockroach that ate bat shit in King Cintolo’s Cave.
Acetylsalicylic Acid
‘What this boy needs is acetylsalicylic acid. Bring me an aspirin.’
Neves stands still. Rigid. She’d been expecting something else, some cure. A few divine words. Some animal’s anatomy. A picture of saints. Of a cabaret singer. Herb tea. Something.
‘Aren’t you going to say something to him?’
‘Listen, is there an aspirin?’
‘There is. But take care, you’ll make a hole in his stomach.’
‘I know that, woman. Dissolve it in a spoonful of water. And make some coffee.’
‘Coffee?’
‘Yes, coffee. Coffee from the pot.
‘OK. Now listen, Gabriel. Take the aspirin first and hold it