Books Burn Badly - Manuel Rivas [188]
Gabriel opened the green door, walked along a windowless corridor with the light on, and then climbed a spiral staircase which led to a room in the mezzanine. He knocked at a second green door with a pane of frosted glass. Thought he heard a kind of onomatopoeia, a verbal piece of stenography. Pushed open the door. Found himself immersed in a space that was both tiny and infinite. Whose four walls were covered in murals showing marine life. The style was unmistakably Sada’s, and Gabriel remembered what this painter, his mother’s friend, used to say about the sea’s restless paradise, shoals that were now only to be found deep down. In this illusion of anemones, starfish, polyps, spirographs, sponges, gorgonians, sea-lilies, urchins, jellyfish, the bed where this smoky Poseidon was sitting seemed to be afloat. Gabriel noticed a colony of sea urchins in one corner of the room. They looked like a chromatic wheel containing all the passions. Among the lighter, pink violet urchins, he distinguished a scarlet urchin. The colour of Catia’s nails.
Dr Montevideo was sitting up in bed, against some pillows, writing on sheets supported by a wooden book-rest. He was smoking a large cigar held more by his teeth than by his lips – a yellow, uneven, gap-filled set of teeth. To his right, on a night table, was a bottle of whisky and a glass. The rest of the bed was strewn with papers, most of which had been covered in shorthand, though some had been typed and corrected by hand. To one side of the bed was a cardboard box wrapped in silver foil which served as a wastepaper basket. It was full of scrunched-up pieces of paper. Some had fallen to the floor like decomposed spheres.
His bulging eyes seemed to be held in place by thick-framed glasses. He rested his cigar on a ceramic plate. Still writing, without looking up, he asked, ‘What would you think of someone who recites beautiful poems and sings melancholy songs before committing a crime? Does this affect the poems they recite and the songs they sing?’
‘I don’t see why it should,’ answered Gabriel.
‘You don’t see why it should? Well, think about it. And tomorrow we’ll talk. You know? A friend of mine, the argonautic painter, wants high literature from me. I’m currently tied up with the implications.’ He coughed. ‘Actually I just scrawl, it’s poor Catia who does the writing. One day, there should be a tribute to the heroines of typing. Now help me bring a bit of order to this apocalypse. Put those planets back in the wastepaper basket and then pour me two glass-dilating fingers from the bottle. Make it three.’
Some time later, Gabriel Samos would know that what Dr Montevideo was writing was A Dramatic History of Culture. Being the first to arrive at the academy, he’d often find Catia immersed in the work of typing up the doctor’s notes. He liked to act as Green Door Messenger between the classroom where Catia held sway and the doctor’s sea-bed. He felt comfortable in the mezzanine and, though he abandoned his classes for much of the course, he didn’t stop visiting the Tachygraphic Rose to see Catia, of course, and to climb the stairs to the cabin, to experience this strange ascent to the depths of the sea. He came back the following summer, in the middle of June 1963, with renewed anxiety. The transcription of the doctor’s notes meant Catia was busier than ever and even devoted some class time to her labour. She typed with astonishing speed, without apparent effort. Her hands transformed the heavy Hispano-Olivetti into a fantastic