Books Burn Badly - Manuel Rivas [46]
As if the dance enabled her to escape, guided by her chiselling heels, Flora left the stage, crossed the small hall of the Dance Academy and ran up the stairs to the first floor, where the clients’ reception rooms were; then up a narrow staircase to the second floor with Samantha’s suite, Pombo’s room and another two rooms which the eight permanent women shared. At night, when there was a show, Pombo would give way to anyone accompanied by a man and to any on their own whom he called nymphs. Finally up a stepladder. Leading to the attic. The trap-door was open and it reminded Flora of a window into another, more intimate room with the veiled light of lamps and botanical shades, where people confessed to indiscretions, since she could hear laughter and whispers, when what she’d been expecting was torn flesh and fresh lamentation.
Flora goes up to Milagres. She’d tried to help her by dancing. She’s not alone, but her eyes are closed, her eyelids swollen, with bluish rings around them.
The child, in the Widow’s hands, resembles another fragment of solitude. The Widow doesn’t like him being so quiet. Hangs him upside down and slaps him to get him crying.
‘What are you doing?’ asks Pombo, who’s more nervous than the rest.
‘What I have to,’ replies the Widow.
The child cries calmly, at measured intervals, as if he thought about each one. The cries sound distant, in the orbit of the seagulls’ calls and the mew of cats climbing down from the roof. The fauna of the lighthouse beams. For seconds. People aren’t generally prepared to let the onomatopoeias of night fill the void. And there’s lots to say.
‘Is he like that?’ asks Samantha.
‘Like what?’
‘That big. And that ugly.’
‘No. He’ll change with the light,’ answers the midwife ironically.
‘No. It depends on the day. Honestly, Samantha, for a worldly woman you do ask some silly questions,’ says the Widow, holding the child now with a look of satisfaction, as if she’d modelled him with her large, miniaturist’s hands.
‘He’s a chocolate-coloured mark on his back. The cacao husks!’ remarks Pombo, stroking the child with his fingertips. ‘A Coruñan through and through, Samantha.’
‘Give the child to his mother,’ Flora intervenes. ‘You’re like a bunch of parrots.’
‘Popinjays,’ Pombo corrects her.
‘That’s what you get for not bringing her proper chocolate.’
Flora was too late.
‘Proper? Wasn’t the chocolate good, Milagres? Was it or was it not good?’
‘That’s what you get for staring at posters of the Charleston dancer Harry Fleming,’ added Samantha, fishing for information, to see if anyone would say something about the child’s father.
‘You’re not wrong,’ said the Widow with a knowing wink.
‘What was the name of that jazz orchestra?’ Samantha suddenly asked. ‘The one that played with kitchen utensils in Marineda Hall.’
‘What kitchen utensils? You’re still on about Monti’s Cardash.’
‘Csárdás actually,’ Flora pointed out.
‘Don’t spoil my lapsus, Miss Academy,’ said Pombo, who was always at odds with Flora. ‘And forget about who the boogie-woogie was, Samantha. The question now is whether or not to take the child to the orphanage before daybreak.’
‘I do believe I recognise that giant. Isn’t that . . . ? Didn’t he carry Arturo da Silva’s gloves for him?’
Some of them only hear the crack of a proper name. A name that causes a certain commotion. The Falangists next to their stocky companion, the one who asked the question, copy him and place their hand like a visor against the sun to see better, though they’re not all looking in the same direction, where Curtis has stopped, but are turning, taking in the panorama, the roofs as well, as if that name evoked a vague feeling. Not a person exactly, but something in the air. Curtis knows he mustn’t move. He’s the hare. He’s the one with the wider field of vision. He’s helped by the sun, which has put the others in a blind spot. That’s why he does well not to move. A sudden movement would give him away and hasten