Books Burn Badly - Manuel Rivas [165]
There, on deck, with a smile as wide as his outstretched arms, was Roque Gantes. Who conducted a dialogue with the absentee. Heard Luís Terranova’s singsong voice. His way of exorcising the pain of arrival.
‘In French?’
‘Le zizi et la foufoune.’
‘In Italian?’
‘Il cazzo, la fessa.’
‘It’s bloody cold?’
‘Fa un cazzo di freddo!’
‘Now I like a bit of cosmopolitanism.’
‘Prick, cunt! Schwanz, Möse!’
‘How about Esperanto?’
‘Foki . . .’
‘Enough!’ he said to his memory. ‘Just a moment, please.’
Pulling the wooden horse, with the tripod camera on his back, his old friend Hercules approached.
‘Well, blow me down.’
‘Mr Gantes!’
He blinked. The sun could do that, place a moment in a passing eternity. Grant a healing pardon to all things.
‘Heard anything?’ asked the travelling photographer.
‘Not a thing, Curtis. The odd echo, that’s all.’
The city’s urban intelligence consisted of working with the light, its long, glass façades, and following the line drawn by the sea. Roque Gantes still became emotional when he saw the lighthouse and his whole body floundered in organic confusion whenever he entered a Spanish port. But he’d decided not to disembark. Never to set foot on native soil so long as the tyrant lived.
‘Come on board, Curtis. I’ve spoken to the captain. We need people. Experts in cold. That was your thing, wasn’t it?’
‘Thermal electricity, Gantes.’
He went up to Carirí and dug around in the saddle-bags. ‘Germinal’s was a good one, Mr Casares’ too,’ he murmured. They’d taken an age to burn. People always supposed the saddle-bags were empty, were an adornment on the photographer’s wooden horse. But Curtis had a few special belongings.
‘I studied this book. Arturo told me, “If you want to train with me, you’ll have to get a profession.” I said, “I can be a shoeshiner. I’ve a shoeshiner’s box.” And he replied, “Anyone who wants polish can stick his fingers up his bum. There’s something that has a future, Curtis. Will change lives. Thermal electricity.” So, that summer, first I’d go to Germinal to read books on electricity and then to train in the gym on Sol Street.’
‘It looks burnt!’ exclaimed Balboa, Stringer, when he saw A Popular Guide to Electricity.
‘It is burnt,’ replied Curtis laconically. ‘The edges are burnt.’
Gabriel felt a jump in his gut. A tingle in his fingers.
Korea was quick, ‘If that’s a book about electricity, all the fuses will start blowing.’
‘The boy’s not stupid,’ said Gantes to the crane operator. ‘He’s got a causal sense of humour.’
‘No, he’s no fool. The thing is books give him cramps in his hands. Even if they’re not about electricity.’
‘That’s not true,’ retorted Korea. ‘I like western novels.’
‘It’s a start,’ affirmed Gantes. ‘A watered-down version of Shakespeare!’
Curtis held the book like a relic, without opening it, afraid that it might fall apart.
‘Cold is the absence of heat,’ he said in contact with the book. ‘You have to know that. And then there are different kinds of heat. Sensible heat, latent heat . . . but, practically speaking, perhaps it’s most important to understand the mechanics of specific heat, which is to say the amount of heat per unit mass required to raise the temperature by one degree Celsius.’
Everyone listened in silence, reverentially, as if a prayer had been spoken on the quay from a hitherto unknown religion. At that moment, Curtis’ look had a slight iridescence. Between the dark refrains of the sea on the pontoons, he seemed to hear Luís Terranova’s startled laugh when he heard him recite the definition of specific heat for the first time, aloud, from memory, without getting a single word wrong. It was by the lighthouse at the start of summer. Curtis was acting as Earman for Luís. He was his memory, his supplier of lyrics and his ears. Luís was finally going to audition as a vocalist for a festive orchestra. Terranova would sing and Curtis had to measure his voice. ‘Can you hear?’ ‘I can now. Go a bit further, to that rock.’ ‘Can you hear?’ ‘Louder, louder!’ ‘Can you hear?’ ‘Not any more.’
‘Come with us, Curtis,’ said Gantes the