Books Burn Badly - Manuel Rivas [159]
‘No?’
Stringer imagined the story would have some surprise, but he hadn’t expected this abrupt ending. He was shocked. Until recently, his only job had been to record the arrival and departure of boats and the price of fish. Obviously he’d heard about the censor’s office, he knew there was a building on Cantóns with various censors. What’s more, before starting to write, one of his errands had been to take the galley proofs to that building to be approved before they were printed. But normally nothing happened. He’d once heard the administrator who returned the proofs comment ironically, ‘The pages devoted to the glorious 18th of July are exactly the same as last year and the year before that. A newspaper that repeats itself! These layabouts haven’t even bothered to change the headlines.’ Another time, he was given an envelope for the director. Someone had written ‘Confidential’ with a red pencil. But the envelope was half open or half closed and he couldn’t resist the temptation. It said any information relating to Korea was to be treated with the utmost caution. Of course, he knew they meant the Asiatic country, but what he saw was the face of the guy down in the docks, Miguel, otherwise known as Korea. He’d received a beating. His shaven head was a globe with oedemas and scabs representing the poor countries.
‘No?’
‘That’s what he said, “You can’t publish this.” And then I . . .’
He blinked. Too much light in his clear eyes. It was something that infuriated him, his glands’ disobedience, ‘Dacryocystitis! A journalist’s nightmare. Would you please lower those blinds!’
Stringer quickly complied. He was afraid the lowering of the blinds would delay the story. So, as he was doing it, he asked, ‘And then what, sir?’
‘I was prepared to plead with him, to beg. It was all so absurd. And it seemed to me such arbitrariness was a defeat for the whole of humanity. I said, “They’re memories of when he was a child, sir. An old man recalling his childhood. That’s all. Why not publish them?” The Minister rummaged through some papers and, without looking at me, pointed to the door and said, “Why? I’ll tell you why. Because where there’s a skipper, a sailor’s not in charge. That’s why.”’
The director of the evening Expreso thumped the table as the Minister had done before him. Aldán was someone who couldn’t say no. It grated on him internally like an ulcer of the soul. In his hypochondriac state, he sometimes thought about this, his soul’s duodenum perforated like a sieve. He admired Benito Ferreiro from the shipping company, who’d just attended a dinner which should have formed part of the city’s honourable history. A tribute to Valentín Paz-Andrade, ex-Republican MP, who’d come back from working as an expert for the United Nations in Mexico. The act was authorised under surveillance, so long as it was presided over by a stooge of the regime. Perhaps one of those who one day urinated on some burning books? Eyes sunken in the fat of time. Anyway, there was lots of talk about Paz-Andrade’s knowledge of the sea. At which point the stooge stood up and proposed a toast, ‘To the Caudillo, Spain’s first fisherman!’
Benito Ferreiro refused to join in the toast. He got up and left the table.
‘Where are you off to, Ferreiro?’ barked the stooge.
Ferreiro turned calmly around and replied, ‘To take a piss.’
‘Let me tell you something else about the censor’s office. Something you can take away with you. Certain scenes can contain tools and instruments of torture. But what can’t appear is their sound. You can see the executioner as he prepares to use the garrotte, but not hear him. That’s the soundtrack.’
It occurred to Stringer there was another man inside the director, a restless creature who was always coming and going. Perhaps a Hypernaut of Infinite Space or an Inhabitant of Emptiness. What he said next had