Books Burn Badly - Manuel Rivas [174]
The last time he saw them was a few days later. It was a kind of anniversary and the crane operator let them play with the ball from the Diligent. At one point, the ball disappeared down a corridor of wood for export. One of them went to get it. Then another. They didn’t come back, so they all went. The operator started to get nervous. It wouldn’t have fallen into the sea? No, no. Impossible. And then Korea and Medusa came out from behind one of the furthest stacks of wood, as if they’d been away on holiday. She was pregnant. Carrying the Diligent’s ball in her belly.
Ramón Ponte laughed as well. The last laughter heard that summer of 1963 on the Western Quay, when Medusa spread her legs and gave birth to the ball, which bounced until coming to rest at the crane operator’s feet.
A police jeep careered around the corner. Ramón Ponte headed for the cabin with the historic football under his arm. The guards ordered the children back home. The port was not a playground any more. They should find somewhere else. The Caudillo’s yacht, the Azor, would be here soon. ‘As for you two, the chump with the ponytail and the disfigured whore, you can come with us. Show us your papers.’
Banana Split
The more impure your thoughts, the longer the cobra that comes out of your mouth. Going to confession as a child, I’d always say I’d had impure thoughts. All the time waiting for impure thoughts. Amalia and I liked to touch our breasts. In the attic, we’d try on clothes, pretend to be designers, copy the way they dressed in fashion magazines. And that was when we started stroking and measuring our breasts. I once had a thought that was sort of impure, fighting Rafa by the stream in Laranxeiro. I liked to fight. Not any old how. You had to provoke it, put a straw on your shoulder and say, ‘Let’s see which of you can get the straw.’ The boys would ignore me, laugh, ‘You’re a brute, don’t be such a brute.’ But sometimes I’d manage it, they were so annoyed I’d got in the way. ‘You’re a fool,’ said Rafa. He was holding me by the wrists, he’d floored me and was sitting on top of me, but I carried on twisting and turning. He was red in the face. ‘Quieten down,’ he’d say, ‘or I’ll have to smack you.’ But all I thought about was winning, getting on top of him and making him ask for mercy. That was the sign of defeat, when they asked for mercy. I don’t know if the thought was impure or not because I wasn’t thinking about anything. Just winning and getting him to ask for mercy. Amalia and I had other thoughts. We’d cup our hands and stroke our breasts and see how they grew. They grew from one minute to the next, one day to the next, one year to the next. They can’t have been impure thoughts, only men and women did that, but something must have happened because one day our tongues became like cobras. Polka said when they got older, cobras grew wings and took to the air, singing, ‘I’m off to Babylon!’ Sometimes, when we’d just been paid, we’d treat ourselves to hot chocolate and doughnuts at Bonilla. Though the ultimate treat, the ultimate luxury, was to have a banana split at Linar. That came later. I think that’s when we grew wings. We couldn’t stop laughing. As if we’d been drugged. ‘I’m going up the staircase,’ Amalia would say after her ice cream. To go to the toilet, Linar had an impressive staircase, of the kind you wanted to go up or down. At a certain height, the staircase divided and in the middle was the cast of a large scallop shell. This trip to the toilet was an artistic outing. Step by step, you grew. ‘With the one I like,’ said Amalia one day, on her return