Books Burn Badly - Manuel Rivas [17]
‘Got a light, boy?’
Zamorana is not really a beggar. She has a job paid for by tips that is very important for the city. Coruña’s late departed look out to sea. Near the shore by the cemetery are the Ánimas shoals, the best breeding grounds, with more starfish on the bottom than can be seen in the sky. Though they can also be spotted falling from on high. Seagulls and cormorants fly with starfish in their beaks, so the starfish jettison their captive limb and return to the sea an arm short. The cemetery affords the best view of the mouth of the bay. And this has something to do with Zamorana, who asked Curtis for a light the night he spent by the graveyard. The beggarwoman is a sentinel. When a liner comes into sight, she goes down Torre Street, warning of the boat’s arrival. A liner is full of rich pickings. Zamorana’s voice sounds like a husky conch shell. ‘Boat’s coming, Mr Ferreiro, boat’s coming . . . Boat’s coming, Mr Ben, boat’s coming . . . Boat’s coming.’
Zamorana emerges with her ditty about a boat’s arrival, and she emerges from the cemetery, not from any old place. Curtis recalls how when he was a boy, Zamorana was already old, already announced boats in her husky voice. He thought she and others like her lasted for ever. María Pita, for example. The procession of country dead remained at the city gates. And the seaside cemetery’s occupants delegated the lighthouse and Zamorana’s husky conch to rouse the city: ‘Boat’s coming.’
The reason Vicente Curtis, otherwise known as Hercules, is thinking about Zamorana is because she’s standing by the Parrote viewpoint. Besides the arsonists, she’s the only discernible presence. She’s unmistakable. She’s wearing all the skirts she owns, the skirts of a lifetime, one on top of the other, so she looks like a female bell. Some ships arrived yesterday. Warships. They’re moored next to the yacht club and are part of the Third Reich’s fleet. She saw them coming, but didn’t go down Torre Street, singing her ditty, ‘Boat’s coming, boat’s coming!’ She watches. She’s seen many things. But not that kind of fire. She’s never read a book. There was a time, perhaps her happiest, when she sold newspapers. She hawked news though she couldn’t read. That’s why she thinks they’re hurting her. Going against her. They’re burning what she never had, what she always needed. There’s something strange about the smoke, it stings, gets behind the eyes. Reminds her of a time she’d rather forget. The day a stranger set fire to the blanket she was sleeping rough under, the day she put out her flaming hair with her hands. And now her hands are scars healed by the sea. That’s why she decided to sleep among the tombs. Where are the readers of books? Why are they taking so long?
‘Oy you, old witch, what you looking at? Get out of here!’ shouts one of the soldiers. ‘Go find yourself a billy-goat on Mount Alto!’
She never kept quiet. This Cain had better listen up. She was going to tell him a thing or two. Put a few things straight. Have it out with him, face to face.
This strange smoke that gets behind the eyes. This itching. The smoky torch. The fire. The smell of fire in her hair. She burnt once already. The skin’s memory. The scars’ itching. She moves off. Better to keep the peace. She returns to her tombs, trailing her bell of cloth. All the skirts of a lifetime.
The book fires are not part of the city’s memory. They’re happening now. So this burning of books isn’t taking place in some distant past or in secret. Nor is it a fictional nightmare thought up by some apocalyptic. It’s not a novel. This is why the fire progresses slowly, because it has to overcome resistance, the arsonists’ incompetence, the unusualness of burning books. The absentees’ incredulity. It’s obvious the city has no memory of this lazy, stubborn smoke moving through the air’s surprise. Even what’s not been written has to burn. Someone arrives from the local tourist office, carrying a pile of leaflets with the programme of festivities,