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By Root 795 0

told me that to get a book I had to go to Minerva. “Minerva?” “Yes, the librarian.” He’d come out with these lyrical excesses to hide his shyness. “That’s Aphrodite and she’s Athene.” And they ended up making fun of me. Was I crazy? “Her name’s Minerva,” Holando kept telling me. So off I went with my scrap of paper. “Excuse me, Minerva . . .” And I thought now she’s going to give me a sarcastic look with those large black eyes of hers and say in a hoarse voice, because her voice was a bit hoarse, “Are you also crazy?” But she didn’t say anything. She read the scrap of paper: Galvani and Animal Electricity. Holando and the others were crying with laughter. Very funny. So what? I could have chosen something else. But this caught my attention. Don’t know why. Or perhaps I do. Once, when I was little, I watched my mother cut a duck’s neck. She was brave enough to do this, to kill an animal with her bare hands. My father was as strong as an ox, but couldn’t do it. Couldn’t even kill a mouse. What’s more, he once bumped into a mouse on the staircase and shouted so loud the poor animal died of fright. So there’s my mother, with her sleeves rolled up, holding the duck, cutting its neck, when something happens and the duck pulls loose, flies over us without a head. My mother explained, “That’s because it had a lot of electricity stored up inside.” I told Minerva this story and she seemed very moved. “Animals shouldn’t be killed for eating,” she said. “I agree. We all agree. Just the other day, we were reading the ten commandments of naturism.” “Who read them?” “Holando. Holando’s the expert.” And Holando comes over. Starts chatting to Minerva, of course he’s pleased. She’s working on a new dictionary. “A dictionary of usage,” she said. “By word families.” That’s nice, I thought. Word families. Holando was one of the first to get killed. Together with the champ of Galicia. They went for the best of them.’

‘Get to the point, will you? The books! What about the books?’

‘Electricity is an amazing thing. You have electricity. A tree has electricity. When life runs out, electricity goes to earth. That book about Galvani and animal electricity must have burnt as well. Though I looked for it among the carnage.’

‘The carnage?’

‘The remains. The remains of books. They stank of flesh.’

‘Some of them were probably bound in leather. It’d be the leather.’

‘I suppose so. It happened right here, a short distance away, in the docks and María Pita Square. They brought loads of books to be disposed of. The pyres burnt for two whole days. I was a park and garden employee at the time and was assigned to clean up the ashes. It was during the summer. August, the 19th of August. Some things you never forget. My body still sways with that blasted lorry, I can feel my teeth chattering. The whole ground was covered in ash, but some were only half burnt. The lorry had to make several trips. We buried them in a waste tip in Rata Field, on the other side of San Amaro. We worked with rakes, it was like scraping away the skin, revealing flesh. Some people vomited, chucked their guts up. After we’d covered them, I could still feel them bubbling under my feet. I threw earth on top, pressed it down as hard as I could, but still felt the bones under my galoshes. I was fired after that. Apparently I was on a list for belonging to the union. That wasn’t all. Half a year later, I was arrested. I was married, my wife about to give birth. Some nativity scene!’

Polka waited for the other to laugh at his irony. It was a pretty sad story, but the man didn’t have much of a sense of humour. He cleared his throat and asked, ‘Was there a copy of the New Testament? It’s not the kind of thing you just forget.’

‘It was like treading on bones, you bet. Point is I was then arrested. Do you know why? For playing. Doesn’t sound very serious, does it? Well, I was arrested for playing music. Someone denounced me because I was due to play on a union excursion. The cultural associations had organised a special train to attend the Caneiros festivities. Upriver. I was a gardener, but