Books Burn Badly - Manuel Rivas [171]
Yes, he remembered them well. The Ministers of Pride, Covetousness, Lust, Envy, Gluttony, Anger and Sloth. The sins were all very stylish, wearing frock coats and top hats, each with a big cigar and ceremonial staff. Arm in arm with them, in very short, low-cut Charleston dresses embroidered with bugles and beads, with cigarette holders and boyish haircuts, came the virtues, the girls from Germinal, the eye doctor, though only a child, had a good look at them, at Humility, Charity, Chastity, Kindness, Temperance, Patience and Diligence. Diligence struck him as particularly beautiful. What he didn’t know, said Polka, is that there was an eighth sin. Presbyopia.
Polka put on his presbyopics and, before turning and becoming really serious, made a gesture he learnt from Pepe Pazos, a sailor who was caught by the revolution of October 1917 in the port of St Petersburg and saw the Aurora fire cannon shots at the Winter Palace, who was also in Madrid in July 1936 – a sailor! – and asked, ‘Where are you going?’ ‘To Montana.’ ‘What for?’ ‘To storm the barracks.’ ‘OK then.’ Pazos, who was an expert in icebergs for the convoys that went to the Arctic during the Second World War. Pazos, who steered a support ship during the Normandy Landings. Well, this Pazos, before talking, made a humble gesture that Polka imitated, ‘What can I tell you that will be lasting?’
Polka had gone off in search of Volume I of Man and the Earth by Élisée Reclus because it contained a key to what he wanted to say, to what that trip upriver, the festivities of that year, actually meant. But, as so often happened, he forgot what he was looking for and ended up staring at a globe in the book held by two hands. If he looked over his presbyopics, the globe moved, became hazy like a strange being. Through his glasses, it became crystal clear, in its place. He wasn’t quite sure how he preferred it, whether crystal clear or blurred.
‘You were going to read me something, Papa,’ said O.
Unlike his natural state, Polka’s seriousness was very dramatic. ‘You’ve got to leave, girl. As soon as possible. Without delay. Before the years trap you and nothing changes. Everything here smells musty. The air. Time itself.’
She knew what was happening. The River Mandeo, the festive river, was running down his spine. It was the same when he recalled the quicksilver glass sign of the Shining Light in the Abyss association in Silva district. That emery design with a sun in flames. The Fascists smashed it to pieces and replaced it with a sign that said ‘Winter Aid’. One night, somebody broke off the second part, leaving the word ‘Winter’ forever engraved on the façade. ‘Winter,’ like that, with a capital letter. So now the River Mandeo was coming back. Because the special train never left. Nor did the boats. And on 2 August they didn’t travel upriver to the field of festivities, Libertaria, for a day. Instead, lots of them travelled as corpses that August, thrown a little further up, from Castellana Bridge, on the Coruña-Madrid road. The dead who washed up in pools were collected by locals and buried. Dead dispossessed of life and identity. The Unknown. In Vilarraso, Aranga and Coirós. Those who were supposed to go upriver, on an outing to Libertaria, ended up travelling downriver. Having been murdered. None of these crimes was ever investigated. The terror of the families, if any were left, was such they didn’t dare look into the dead.
‘You were going to read me something, Papa. You were talking about a trip upriver. And were going to read me something.’
‘I was after a book about animal electricity, it was a bit of joke, to see what she’d say, the others were watching. And she, Minerva, the librarian Holando called Minerva, told me very seriously there was a book called Hypnotism and Animal Magnetism, so I told her the story about the duck. The day my mother took it and cut its neck, she was the only one at home brave enough to do that, to sacrifice an animal so that we could eat. The duck put up such a resistance it took to the air. Flew over us without a