Books Burn Badly - Manuel Rivas [194]
From A Dramatic History of Culture by Héctor Ríos, unpublished.
The Compulsive Writer
He filled his notebooks very quickly. He didn’t just like to write, he had a passion for calligraphy. Which later became a passion for stenography after he learnt the Martí method in Dr Montevideo’s version at Catia’s academy. He noted down his thoughts. Noted down what he was going to say. Both Chelo and the judge, for different reasons, were proud of this premature writer’s vocation. Chelo believed, rightly so, that it originated in those early lessons aimed at exorcising his fear of speech by means of graphic fluency and what she called ‘the hand’s sincerity’. She was pleased and deeply moved by the gifts of observation revealed by Gabriel’s writing, since she still thought of him as a child. The judge Samos had forgotten about the years of despair, that complicated period when Gabriel was so fragile, always on the verge of cracking, like a nativity figure. One day, he’d even used the word ‘defective’ a little carelessly. At a time when Gabriel’s stammer seemed to be getting worse. ‘Defective,’ he muttered, ‘a defective son’. In search of a word that sounded neutral, an ‘extenuating term’, he later claimed, he chose one that, even in a whisper, banged like a tin can.
‘You’re thinking about yourself,’ said Chelo. ‘You’re not thinking about him, you’re thinking about yourself.’
There was a hint of horror underlying his wife’s expression. She started muttering as well, in a sad tone, as if she’d picked the word ‘defective’ up off the floor and was trying to repair it.
‘What do you mean?’
‘You know very well what I mean. You’re thinking about what they’ll say. “Did you know the judge’s son has a stutter, Samos’ son can’t get his words out?” That’s what you’re thinking.’
‘Yes, that too. But most of all I’m thinking he can’t be a judge if he stutters. Had you thought about that? There are many things you can’t be in life if you’re tongue-tied. You can’t be a minister, or a general, or a bishop . . . No, you can’t. You can’t command an army, or say Mass, or pronounce sentence. You can’t do the most important jobs in life. Right? You can’t be a notary, secretary at the town hall, a policeman, a radio presenter. You can’t even sing the lottery. Or commentate a goal.’
He suddenly felt well on this trip to the absurd. He was talking about getting tongue-tied while his was out enjoying a stroll down a shaded path.
‘You can’t even be a criminal. You can’t hold up a bank and trip over your tongue.’
He stopped talking when he noticed Chelo’s distorted face. A Cubist face on the verge of splintering. He didn’t often see her cry, show her emotions. He’d thought about this, her phlegmatic qualities. A serenity whose immutability sometimes disturbed him. She seemed to contemplate the world in a frame, which allowed her to walk with curiosity, too much self-control. Her oriental calm in the Chinese Pavilion, where the only dramatic moments came from the grooves of the vinyl record, that Austrian soprano singing Pamina’s amorous lament, Ach, ich fühl’s, a sadness that forced its way into his study, made itself heard, stopped him doing anything else, despite the volume being turned down at its source, next to Chelo’s quiet painting. This at least was the impression she gave when she thought she was alone and could be observed without her realising, that sweet, hypnotic movement of the brush. Perhaps all the drama coming from the vinyl grooves was meant for him. A personal matter with the Austrian soprano and her high notes. He took