Books Burn Badly - Manuel Rivas [30]
Arturo da Silva had told him that sometimes the safest place was the middle of the ring. The harpooner had talked to him of the calm at the centre of a hurricane. Maybe it was that instinct which had brought him here, to the city centre, after thirty days in hiding. A whole month stuck in the attic of the Dance Academy, also known as Un-deux-trois, his only company a mannequin the harpooner Mr Lens had given his mother. A headless mannequin. A very tall woman, the mannequin, which the sea had thrown up unharmed among a multitude of cripples, maimed figures, loose heads, broken busts and odd extremities. The ship that lost them when it listed violently in a storm off Rostro wouldn’t come back for castaways like these. Mr Lens scoured the beach, slung the tall woman, the only one who was complete, over his shoulder and also picked up three wooden female legs. These were gratefully received by hosiers across the city. They were long, very slim, and were soon on display in the windows of Crisálida, Gran Corsetería Francesa and Botón de Oro. But he couldn’t place the mannequin. The ebony woman was simply too tall. ‘If the country progresses, if we advance, there may yet be room for such tall women,’ said the clothes manager in the Espuma department store on San Andrés Street, who was considerate enough to offer Mr Lens a blanket to wrap her up a bit since, while it was a liberal city, people had their own views and susceptibilities and Mr Lens didn’t want to run into the procession coming from St Nicholas’, bearing Our Lady of Sorrow, being in possession of this tall, black woman.
‘It must be heavy,’ said the clothes manager. ‘Though beauty weighs less.’
For the first time, Mr Lens took a close look at his discovery. When he’d found it, it had been half buried in the sand. What the sea had made with the scattered bodies and mangled limbs was a horrifying pastiche. He thought that now, not before. On the beach, he’d gone in search of useful items. The sea wasn’t going to surprise him. The tall woman’s head was like a highly polished large wooden egg. As he turned it around, he observed there were no eyes, mouth or nose. So what was there to look at? And yet now, in the shop, before he slung it over his shoulder, he examined the head carefully and noticed some very delicate features, the beginnings of a face. First of all, he saw some cheekbones and then, below the cheeks, the melancholy protrusion of some lips. He stroked the head and decided it wasn’t quite smooth. He could feel a few invisible hairs pushing through. This woman was coming into being. He took a fancy to it. He’d take it to the Dance Academy to see if Milagres would keep it for him. He wouldn’t say anything about the life in the wood. They might think he was bringing them a monster. She’d already been scared the last time, when he showed her a small but ferocious-looking revolver. A Bulldog.
‘Where did you get that?’
‘It arrived in a whale.’
‘You find everything inside a whale.’
‘Almost everything.’
‘Bring it here,’ said Samantha. She gripped the revolver. The madame had turned up unexpectedly, without them realising. She had a cigarette holder in one hand and the revolver in the other. ‘It’s about my size. Today’s my birthday. Will you give it to me? I need a friend I can trust.’
On 20 July, Curtis was with Arturo da Silva and others from Shining Light, helping to erect one of the barricades protecting the Civil Government by the Rosalía de Castro Theatre on the side of the docks. They’d carried sacks of sand from Orzán. As on Saturday and Sunday, to the sound of ships’ sirens and horns,