Books Burn Badly - Manuel Rivas [241]
I whispered, ‘I’ve an idea.’
‘Will you leave me alone!’
Quietly, ‘Listen, Glenda, we can share him.’
‘What? You’re crazy!’
In a low voice, ‘One day for you, one day for me.’
I knew she’d laugh. When she laughed, her whole body shook. Without stopping. A reverse Negro spiritual.
Take my hand precious Lord, lead me home.
Finally that Sunday in winter arrived. It was freezing. We arranged to visit Kew Gardens and saw a rose despite the cold, a white rose, like the ones on the road from Castro to Elviña. There it was, a tiny white rose, next to the ground, opening like a memory in the frostbitten earth. ‘Snowdon’, it said on the sign. That day, the flower, reminded me of a compliment a stranger once paid Amalia, which left us amazed.
‘Your beauty is intolerable!’
Though she was quick enough to reply, ‘And you haven’t really seen me!’
He was more or less blind, despite having a good eye, because he was unable to turn back. Some people are afraid of being lucky.
Lucky me, I thought, next to winter’s solitary flower.
Lucky I wore stilettos that were killing me, chafing my skin, freezing my toes. Even when I’m naked, I won’t take them off. Till the pleasure is too much and they fall off.
Lucky all the cafés shut their doors in our face. A moment ago, I’d have given anything for a hot cup of tea and a cloud, lucky, but now I keep quiet because we’re hugging and kissing, next to the iceberg, and everything’s in motion, there’s pleasure in the world’s navel, which is good for the circulation, and hot air that goes to your head, the warmth of chestnuts roasted in their own burs.
Lucky the Underground carriage was empty to start with, a nuptial carriage that Sunday afternoon, rocking, taking us from corner to corner.
Lucky I kept the fire inside my mouth. The fire the girl from Camden Town gave me.
Lucky we opened the red door. Lucky we climbed the stairs. Lucky we entered the room, embraced in front of the window. Lucky there’s someone to take you from cold to heat. To the other side of the wind, but still inside it.
From the room, we can see the small gardens with their trees. We can’t set foot inside them. Our key is for one floor only. But now we’re able to run across them, jump over the hedges, come and go with the wind. Pictures are fine, but there’s nothing like a window. Windows are better for framing an embrace. Everything we see belongs to the embrace. The railway, the hoarding, the barbed wire, keep out, the plastic bag lifted up, up, but then falling, nostalgic for its weight, as if searching for what it carried.
The wind is one and the same, but each tree has its own. They move in different, sometimes opposite directions. Look. Even the branches of a single tree move differently, as if they’ve torn off bits of wind. The birch shakes, is embraced, more than the others. That plane tree still has a few leaves. Another mystery. Almost every tree has a few leaves that don’t fall. They’re there the whole winter and don’t fall. Why not? The rain as well. I mean the rain is one and the same, but each tree, each bush, has its own. The fatness, the gleam of the drops is quite distinct. See how the drops hang after it’s rained. How they settle on the branches, the buds, the tips of the buds. Settle like notes in a score. Not just the trees. Each house has its own rain. Each window. This window.
Lucky.
Lucky wind.
Lucky rain. Notes sliding down the windowpane.
‘Lucky you,’ they told me for finding someone like Pementa.
‘Lucky,’ murmured Pementa when he found the mole on my back. Lucky. Rocking like a boat on the water bed, he found the mole on my back, the circle of his lips around it, a sucker, his tongue whispering, writing. Lucky. A murmur I heard through my skin, which resounded in the cavern of my chest, alongside my heart, climbed my throat and emerged like a sloe. The black mole opening, ‘Snowdon’, Kew’s rose, the white rose on the way to Elviña, blue wellies, stiletto heels, with the one I like, everything, tossing and turning, black mole, white rose.
Lucky.
The Medal
He was about to open the