Books Burn Badly - Manuel Rivas [156]
‘Where are you from?’
‘I belong to an astral diaspora, the Inhabitants of Emptiness.’
‘What are you doing next to Hercules Lighthouse?’
‘It’s a point of cosmic convergence. It appears in the genetic information of the Explorers of Infinite Space. Among extraterrestrials, it’s vox populi. This is where I hope to start the Soulder, an apparatus for receiving cosmozoons.’
‘What are cosmozoons?’
‘Particles of life from other systems.’
Marconi always sitting on the same stone.
‘Why do you always sit on this stone?’
‘It’s not a stone. It’s the Soulder’s stator.’
‘What exactly is a Soulder?’
‘A space vehicle I’m trying out, which one day will move as a result of the energy accumulated in this ancient lighthouse. The historians of antiquity talk of a Large Mirror in this lighthouse of Brigantia which shows a reflection of Ireland. What are we talking about? A cosmic observation point, an equally old UFO base.’
It was the first time an article had been written about UFOs in Galicia. Stringer highlighted the similarities between the Roswell Man, who appeared in 1947 near Corona (New Mexico, USA), and the Hercules Man, who landed for the first time in Coruña in 1957, as he himself has confessed. They’re both pale. Both completely bald. Only that the famous one died and disappeared while the other, who so far has escaped notice, lives on among us with an assumed identity. In his own words. An exclusive interview in the evening Expreso.
‘See, it made the front page!’
Tito Balboa or Stringer is elated. It’s his first piece. A report that will set tongues wagging. His first journalistic scoop.
Curtis blinks as he reads the news item.
‘But that’s Marconi!’
The travelling photographer eyes Stringer differently, with disappointment, distrust. ‘So you think you’re clever?’
‘I have to do another report on you, Mr Curtis. Imagine the headline: “FOUND: HERCULES”.’
‘Right,’ said Curtis. ‘On one condition. You have to put, “FOUND: HERCULES, SON OF A WHORE”.’
That seemed to shut him up.
Marconi, sitting on his stone chair, the stator, gazes at his own portrait in the paper’s photomontage, next to a strange, membranous being. Emits murmurs. If the question is whether the earth is a shadow of the sky, the answer is yes.
The Diligent’s Ball
On one occasion, he let them play with it, the first football. It fell off the deck of the British ship the Diligent. Some crewmen jumped down, but couldn’t catch the boy who took it. He ran and ran down Luchana Alley, across Rego de Auga, until he reached Ovos Square, where his pursuers realised there was nothing they could do. The fugitive was safe among the stalls and the forest of skirts belonging to women selling birds and eggs. The ball was part of the city’s secret.
There must have been a grain of truth in this epic story. When you held the ball in your hands, if you brought it close to your body, you could hear a beating that wasn’t yours. The boy’s race. The hero’s heart.
‘Who was it?’
‘One of my grandfathers,’ answered Ramón Ponte proudly. ‘He was self-taught. Had his own scales for weighing the value of historical events. And you know what? That boat, the Diligent, went and sank in the entrance to the bay. Must have been as a result of losing the ball.’
‘Can I report it? Make an interview with you?’ asked Tito Balboa.
‘No way. It might lead to an international protest. It’s not a stone, boy. This is history.’
They were playing on the Western Quay. A place where, between nets and stacks of wood, you learnt how to control your pass, given the limits of the sea. Which may explain why Coruñan footballers such as Chacho, Cheché Martín, Amancio and Luis Suárez were