Books Burn Badly - Manuel Rivas [24]
‘You can only pick one,’ says Curtis, impervious to his remarks. ‘They’re Flora’s. They’re OK. I like them.’
‘I’m not in the mood for crying. I already have to have dinner with my mother and an empty plate. What’s the son of the orphan’s father going to have for dinner? Cod. Corpus meum.’
‘Why don’t you tell her not to lay three places?’
‘She won’t listen. She goes crazy. You don’t know what she’s like. Poor Mummy Cauliflower! She’d accepted it. What does it matter whether he died in St John’s or here? But someone went and said something, and now she’s got this idea a dead man could have been stored in salt. If cod is stored in salt, why not a salted man? Some cod are as big as a man.’
Curtis stared at him in disbelief. Stretched out his arms to measure an imaginary leaf.
‘I’m not joking,’ said Terranova. ‘Some cod are like men.’
Water was pouring down his face. Not all of it from the sea. He took a sip. Spat it out. ‘I’ll take this one. The Decline of the Gods by Federica Montseny. Judging from the title, it’ll go against the world, be a little funny.’
That’s it. A ‘Casaritos’! The supervisor wouldn’t look at the book in the same way if it didn’t have that signature, the ex-libris of his name in artistic handwriting. He feels the excitement of having captured something of its owner. He feels that somewhere in Madrid, wherever he may be, Casares is aware two claws have just grabbed him by the lapels and are prising apart his weakened ribs. He examines the signature. He’s not an expert in calligraphy, but he can see the portrait of the man in it. His signature is really a drawing. With its angles and curves. The second ‘a’ of ‘Santiago’ and the first ‘a’ of ‘Casares’ are eyes. The most peculiar stroke is that linking the ‘g’ of ‘Santiago’ with the ‘C’ of ‘Casares’, as if the missing letter, the final ‘o’ of ‘Santiago’, had given its skein to join them. In this case, the second surname, ‘Quiroga’, is represented by the digraph ‘Qu’ and a full stop. Like this: ‘Santiagcasares Qu.’ There is a slanting line underneath, which rather than underlining his name, acts as a gently sloping ramp which the signature ascends.
Weren’t there any more?
Santiago Casares was known to have owned the city’s finest private library. 12 Panadeiras Street had two kinds of superimposed walls: the external wall and the internal bookshelves. Having inherited the library from his father, he received new publications from some of the best bookshops in Europe. Many such books arrived by sea. The supervisor remembered having read an interview in which Casares explained how sailors brought his father books by hand that were forbidden or unavailable in Spain. And how one of his happiest childhood memories was opening the packages ‘brought by the sea.’ He remembered that bit perfectly. He also knew something about packages brought by the sea.
‘Brought by the sea,’ he murmured.
‘What?’
‘More, there must be lots more.’
‘There’s a pile of them burning over there, in the main square. And a bunch were arrested and taken to the Palace of Justice. There are also some in the bullpen.’
The supervisor acknowledges his subordinate’s intention with a smile. Books as defendants, under arrest, against the wall. With their backs to people. In a line, squeezed tight, unable to move, in mute silence. They were the lucky ones. Days, months, years will go by and the arrested books will gradually disappear. A slip of the hand. A determined grip. Book by book, the dismantling of the library, what’s not burnt, in the Palace of Justice. And the same thing will happen to the man’s entire credentials. Everything will be the object of pillaging. Possessions great and small. Even little, intimate things. Not just his books, but the carved wooden shelves that hold them. The collections of the amateur scientist, the curious naturalist, have been carried off or destroyed. The lenses, measuring instruments, appliances for seeing what’s invisible. His herbaria and entomological boxes. All his effects, all his fingerprints. Here’s the last of the pillagers, one who was