Books Burn Badly - Manuel Rivas [201]
If they came to me, it must be for a reason. Shame not to read them.
Most Excellent Judge
My dear Dr Samos,
Having received your letter, I quickly sought out information concerning the architect António Soares. The investigation was carried out by people I trust implicitly and obviously I looked into the matter myself. The results could not be more surprising. We found no evidence of an architect by that name and I am in a position to affirm that there is not one in the whole of Porto. There must have been some kind of mistake. All our enquiries came back negative, in the sense that we received no news of such a person either as an architect or in any other notable profession. We could only find a baker of that name, a man with the habits of his trade, who sleeps during the day and works at night, and who eventually was kind enough to confess that he had travelled to Galicia only once and had no plans to return. When asked why, he simply said that he considered it, and the whole of Spain, ‘dangerous land’. He went no further, since he spoke very little and was distrustful when silent. I only mention this episode because of its interest concerning the prejudices people hold.
With God, for many years.
P.S. How are your studies on the links between the thought of José Donoso Cortés and our own António Sardinha?
P.P.S. I remember now a strange detail. The architect’s name is the same as that of a sculptor from Porto in the last century, António Soares dos Reis, who happened to receive first prize at the 1881 Exhibition in Madrid for his work The Exile.
She’d give them back to the judge. They were his. They were in a zipped pocket in his green hunting trousers. It wasn’t usual to find something like that. She always went through the clothes. In case there was a banknote or something. She only ever found the odd coin, which are like nits. Who knows what the letters were doing in there, his carbon copy and the Porto judge’s reply? To start with, she wondered what this Most Worthy would be like. But then she directed all her attention towards the Portuguese architect and his boat-houses. Until then, these letters had only been read by the two friends. If they’d fallen into her hands, there must be a reason. She shared the secret about that invisible man, the Portuguese architect. She stared at the film of water. Who was this António Soares?
No. She wouldn’t hand them to the judge. All saints have their favourite. She didn’t even tell Neves the maid about her find when she took back the clean clothes. She waited until she was alone with the painter. She posed in the Chinese Pavilion as every Thursday, just as they’d agreed. It seemed to her the portrait was progressing very slowly. That day, the two of them, painter and model, glanced at each other from time to time, but without talking. A woman’s voice hung in the air. Chelo had put that record on again with the opera singer whose voice extended time. She definitely had an open body, thought O. She found her calming, said the painter, though on O she had the opposite effect. She made her alert, excited, there were even moments she felt anxious. Her voice came out of the flames and returned to the embers. It reminded her of moths around a lamp and, when the record came to an end, she thought she could hear and smell the scorching of wings. Wings that burnt badly. That day, she had the letters in her hands and felt as if she were holding people. The effect of the song, even though she only understood a few words, sparks of excommunion, was to complicate