Books Burn Badly - Manuel Rivas [206]
O knew Hercules. Of course she did. He’d always enquire after Polka. One time, the photographer with the horse and O with the donkey met. ‘What’s the donkey’s name?’ ‘Grumpy. And the horse?’ ‘Carirí.’ ‘They’d make a good couple, Grumpy and Carirí.’
‘I was there at the son’s birth. Curtis was already a lighthouse when he was born. He would have been champion of Galicia.’
Every time O went to the Hotel of Mirrors, she saw the Old Woman with the Feather Boa, who knew things others didn’t. Sometimes she was frightened by what she heard. She’d leave the hotel with the exciting and dangerous sensation of knowing too much. On top of her head, she’d be carrying a load of clothes and another one of Samantha’s secrets.
‘Were you called Samantha as a child?’
She used a long holder to smoke scented cigarettes. O realised, whenever thorny episodes came up, Samantha created a cloud.
‘I was never a child. I didn’t have time to be a child. Childhood didn’t exist when I was born.’
On such occasions, the smoke would pour out of her mouth’s exhaust, in a grimace her make-up multiplied by three. O reached the following conclusion: everything in that woman was multiplied by three because of her superimposed faces. It wasn’t farcical, it was real. When happy, very happy. When sad, three times dark.
‘I had to run away from childhood. Hence my physique. I had to grow up quickly. Were you not maltreated when you were little?’
‘By whom?’
Three times horror. Samantha blew out another cloud of smoke. Her face had turned deathly pale.
‘I won’t let them abuse me now I’m old.’
She went back to the subject of Manlle. He’d started making money transporting wolfram to the docks from the Carballo and Silleda mines. At the start of the Second World War, when the Nazis redoubled their efforts, wolfram became a precious mineral. ‘Anyone with initiative and four wheels could make pots of money. He sought out vehicles wherever he could find them. Vehicles requisitioned during the war. Belonging to official organisations. To the army. Under wraps. He also covered up for others. Made lots of contacts. He can pull strings in the most unlikely places. But he’s a spendthrift as well. He’s like a spoilt child who’s never had enough. To start with, I liked him for it. His background was poor, but he was open-handed. We came to an agreement. I’m not the peace of the world, its daily bread, but I keep my word. He’s false. Like Judas. When he acquired the Dance Academy, he swore he’d give everyone work and he promised me the mirror suite for life. I trusted him. More fool me!
‘Milagres, Hercules’ mother, the woman with the mattress, eventually left for South America when her son came down from the mountains, having been on the run because of the war. She left with a harpooner who’d worked on a whaling ship in Cee. The harpooner had a cetacean’s goodness. They went to Brazil. Opened a restaurant in Recife called the Whale’s Belly. I’m not surprised. He was always giving Milagres things that had turned up in the bellies of whales.’
‘What things?’ O asked the Woman with the Feather Boa incredulously.
‘You can find anything inside a whale’s belly,’ she replied. ‘St Gonzalo once entered a whale and came back with an image of the Virgin. So just imagine what it’s like now!’
‘For example?’ insisted O.
‘He gave her a beautiful doll whose hair grew because it was natural.’
‘What else?’
‘A revolver,’ said Samantha, twirling her feather boa.
‘He gave her a revolver and a doll?’
‘No. He gave her the doll with the china face and goatskin body. I got the revolver, girl. Do you want to see it?’
‘No way! Oh, go on then.’
O wanted to see what was used to kill men.
‘It’s called a Bulldog.’
And that’s what the revolver was like. Snub-nosed and fierce.
The Lights Going Out
18 July 1963
The judge told the story again that evening in the main reception room of the Finis Terrae Hotel. Here a banquet was being