Books Burn Badly - Manuel Rivas [247]
‘What you said before was obviously a tribute to Shakespeare. I’m glad. We need culture. I wondered where I might find it and here it is. In a ward in hospital.’
His heart was pumping again. Aphrodite had told him you get this ecstatic reaction in people who’ve suffered a heart attack. A false sense of power. Life coursing back into their body. Reserved people who suddenly loosen their tongue. Yes, misery guts had suddenly become chatty. Extremely polite. ‘How wonderful,’ said the hidden man, ‘to find someone who really knows their Scripture.’
‘His tongue loosened, mine got stuck,’ Polka told the nurse. ‘You should have seen me in the good times. Verbum caro factum est et habitavit in nobis . . .’
‘You’d have made a good Holy Father, Francisco.’
‘Call me Polka. When I was young, everybody called me that. And I’ve already been Pope. During Carnival. It’s a miracle I wasn’t martyred.’
She’d been wanting to talk about that. The doctors were amazed by what they’d found in Polka’s heart. Nothing to do with an ecstatic recovery. His was slow, gradual. Rather they were amazed he’d lasted so long. He had other complications. Polka knew he had other complications. But the thing with his heart was surprising. A clinical case.
‘I don’t want to be a clinical case,’ he said mistrustfully. ‘What’s wrong with my heart?’
‘Your heart is a book,’ replied Aphrodite. ‘You had two heart attacks before this one. It’s obvious from the scars. The doctors can’t understand how you managed to survive without medical attention. Don’t you remember anything? You should have felt something like the thread of life being severed.’
‘Once or twice, I did forget to breathe, yes.’
‘And what did you do?’
‘I drew on my resources. Drew on my resources and tore death’s horseshoes off my face.’
So all that had been written in his heart? After that business with the books, his right arm had been numb for days. He had no memory of the pain. He felt lethargic, resistant. Remembered what Holando used to say, always playing with words. He said traballo – ‘travail’ or ‘work’ – came from tripalium, a tool used to restrain a horse while shoeing it. He’d felt he was being tortured. But who could distinguish between what was happening inside and outside the body? He never complained. As he was afraid of being afraid, so the possibility of complaining caused him such unease it made him laugh. He’d heard of the thyroid, a gland that made you grow. Perhaps his made him laugh. He’d certainly forgotten to breathe, but realised in time. His skin changed colour. Everything around him acquired a crimson glow, on the verge of going out. The other time he forgot to breathe was when he was invaded by ants. He had high fever. Was convinced he was underground. The ants came in through his bullet wounds and all his other orifices. He’d once had a nightmare that insects were invading his body. The first to arrive were death flies, which laid eggs out of which came larvae, etc. His body was there for the taking. But on this occasion the ants were burdened with seeds, tufts, breadcrumbs. One ant carried a drop of duck’s blood. Another, the head of a matchstick with red aniline. There were groups carrying even larger things. A cricket they insisted on introducing through his mouth. Fragments of The Invisible Man. His body was to be a deposit. Until, that is, he remembered to breathe. So all that had been written in his heart?
He didn’t stop. Polka let him speak.
‘Some people focus on his great genius as a comedian and tragedian, or the way he controls the passions, but I’m fascinated by the way he chronicles power in action. Each sentence is imbued with decisive power. I have to admit that, in questions of power, even my admired Machiavelli is like a pettifogger next to this friend’s royal musculature.’
‘I’ve buried more books than I’ve read,’ said Polka finally, without a hint of irony. He was being enigmatic.
‘Books? You’re a strange kind of gravedigger.’ There was now an obvious