Books Burn Badly - Manuel Rivas [40]
‘What you’d really like to know is how octopuses do it, right?’
‘Right.’
The kind of question that, once asked, ends up involving a lot of people. Somebody in Odilo’s Bar on Torre Street brought up the third arm.
‘That’s the octopus’ penis. The third arm. As for the female, well, she has herself a good glove for that arm.’
‘Yeah, but how do you know which the third arm is if there are eight of them?’
The kind of question Terranova and Curtis would end up asking when they visited the cabin on ‘Carmiña’ and Ponte showed them the progress he’d made as a self-taught enthusiast on his treatise entitled ‘Intimacy of the Sea’. Thanks to his contacts in port, he obtained books and international publications that were translated for him at the Rationalist School. He also received illustrations and engravings he endeavoured to reproduce. Of current interest were not the techniques of reproduction, but amatory forms.
‘The ones making love in a cross, at right angles to each other, are lampreys.’
‘And which get the most satisfaction?’ asked Terranova.
‘How should I know, dumbhead? Some people are never satisfied and one day discover the third arm so to speak. I knew a woman who was only ever happy with an ear of maize. Her husband was difficult and clumsy. One thing is satisfaction, another time. As far as I’m aware, cuttlefish have the greatest stamina in the sea. Once they mate, that’s it, they never stop making love. They only part for the female to spawn and then they die.’
Both Luís Terranova and Curtis were listening very carefully because they’d caught cuttlefish in their hands and now they understood why there were times these extraordinary beings with ten jet-propelled arms didn’t try to escape, but gave themselves up so easily. The trouble is the well of knowledge, once opened, is never filled and Luís and Curtis wanted to know how crabs and sea cows do it, with their armour-plated bodies and legs that are pincers. ‘Here’s an interesting detail,’ said Ponte, searching in the folder for the notes he’d made based on the experience of the Sea Club’s divers, whom he called the Phosphorescents.
‘Crustaceans also mate for a long time, the difference being the males carry the females on their back, take them for an amorous walk on the bottom of the bay.’
‘And sea urchins?’ Curtis suddenly remembered. ‘How do they do it?’
‘Sea urchins live together, but love at a distance,’ said Ponte somewhat mysteriously as he closed the folder. ‘I don’t know! At this rate, I’ll have to put the scientific texts under “The Night” with my novels.’ He had Haunted Shipwrecks and Captain Nemo’s Lovers together with copies of ‘The Ideal Novel’.
All the same, the most precious object in the cabin on ‘Carmiña’, which the operator had set up on a kind of pedestal, was the ball from the Diligent. According to legend, which it would be sacrilege to question in the operator’s presence, the first leather football to arrive in Coruña. The Diligent was a British ship. Some crewmen started a game up on deck and the ball fell on to the quay. ‘As soon as it bounced off the ship, it was obvious the Diligent’s ball wasn’t coming back. It seemed to want to stay on dry