Books Burn Badly - Manuel Rivas [126]
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 from 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,