Books Burn Badly - Manuel Rivas [243]
‘Your mother sings better than ever.’
‘She comes from time to time.’
‘I remember she was always at the window.’
‘Still is. Watching out for boats.’
‘Customs patrol boats?’
‘No.’ Ironically, ‘yachts.’
Coccinella septempunctata
Gennevilliers National Theatre, spring 1994
He was awake the whole night. Couldn’t get the bill out of his head. Read the reviews, which were favourable, some of them enthusiastic. The woman with the hoarse voice was playing King Lear. Three hours on stage, six days a week. He was actually quite grateful not to have got a ticket the first few days. He’d use them to see other things in Paris without the stifling heat. He remembered one August when he’d managed to survive a trip to the Botanic Gardens and Père Lachaise Cemetery. He thought he could still see the acrylic memory of those touristic footsteps sticking to the pavements. But most of all he viewed the delay as a kind of mourning. He took the most sensitive evidence out of his suitcase: the books with burnt edges and a survivor’s vitality. Then a copy of a document with lists of confiscated and imprisoned books. Incomplete lists since disappeared, burnt books, deceased books, had not been included. Several postcards from Durtol Sanatorium. A magnifying glass. The books he’d brought had not been chosen for their literary or bibliographical value. He’d let his hand pick them out. The first books he’d read in the section of charred remains. The start of his secret induction. He planned to tell her how the books from 12 Panadeiras Street had resisted. Lots had fallen. But some had survived the flames, the dampness of the dungeons, the robbers in the Palace of Justice. The books he’d brought had something else in common: Santiago Casares’ stylish signature, an elegant calligraphic portrait. Anthropomorphic.
He went to 168 Rue de Vaugirard and tried to glimpse the sixth floor. He was tempted to climb the stairs and ask who was living in the dovecot, the garret that was their first home in exile. But he checked his detective’s instinct. Then, at midday, took a taxi and decided to visit the Rue Asseline.
He made a mistake.
He passed in front of her house. Thought he heard the sound of the news on television. But couldn’t see anything from the street. There was a window with a net curtain and a thicker cloth curtain behind. He could ring the doorbell, but he didn’t have the books with him. It’d been a furtive incursion, a strong wish to visit the Rue Asseline and see where 12 Panadeiras Street had got to, where the dramatic corridor of history led to. He’d left everything back in the hotel. It’d be ridiculous to turn up now and stammer out a story with nothing to support it. What would she think? She’d be suspicious of someone arriving out of the blue, stirring up the embers. A judge, son of a Francoist judge, who’d come to talk about extant books. Maybe not. Maybe she’d have a taste for such surprises. Someone who in her twenties had played Death in Jean Cocteau’s Orpheus and in her seventies still had it in her to play King Lear had to be brave.
He entered a Portuguese eating-house on the corner. Most of the customers were building labourers or mechanics, depending on their work clothes. He fancied eating in a place like this, wine served in a jug, not in a bottle, oilskin tablecloths. He sat down next to a window. And then saw her. Saw her approach the Portuguese restaurant. His mistake was not to stop looking. Most of the workers glanced at her when she came in. Some of them probably knew her. Though there was nothing about her to draw attention. Just herself.