Books Burn Badly - Manuel Rivas [51]
‘It’s terrible what you’ve endured,’ Lens continued. ‘Everything’s in disarray, the boat and your bones. And then you find yourself under the illusion that it’s all over. Because the other boats you thought had foundered in the storm are coming towards you, safe and sound. A horizon of ships. You’re dumbstruck by such a miracle. Merde! Shit! Verdammt und zugenäht!’
The harpooner, like many other maritime residents and guests, practised the art of saying ugly words in foreign languages for them to sound a little distinguished. A kind of crude elegance.
‘What happened?’ asked Pombo on tenterhooks, he who’d heard so much.
‘Not a single ship. It was a decapitated forest. Bits of forest torn to shreds which, after the storm, came together at sea and interlaced roots to hold up trunks and crowns like the masts of sailing ships, with nature’s will for weaving tapestries out of tatters. It’s normal in shipwrecks to find a brotherhood of remains. But this was as big as the horizon itself.’
The harpooner’s enormous hands ordered the geology of earth on the table’s tectonic plates. He took a slice out of the table with the corner of his right hand and lifted up a chunk of Yucatan. ‘It was this wooded territory coming towards us, towards our ship in the area of central calm.’
‘Was that before or after you had cataracts?’ asked Pombo at last, unable to control himself.
‘What?’
‘The wood moving at sea.’
‘I’m talking here to Hercules. Anyone else can shut up or provide tobacco.’
‘Portuguese blond,’ said Pombo in a conciliatory tone, holding out a cigarette.
‘To start with, we thought no,’ Lens continued, ‘they were boats, an entire fleet that had been reunited. Because we could hear shouts as well. Isolated, distant. Unintelligible. Sometimes they sounded like hurrahs of joy carried on the wind, others like cries of agony and anguish filling the sea with fear. We approached with our hearts in our mouths. No, they weren’t boats. This was no vast fleet of salvaged ships. As we got closer, our eyes were forced to accept something even more fantastical. What was coming towards us was the forest. The sea had gathered strips of wood, drifting timbers. The masts we descried in the distance were in fact large trees, huge mahoganies. Then we heard an orchestral guffaw. A spine-chilling peal of laughter. All of that nature was making fun of us. Laughter can be truly terrifying when you don’t know where it’s coming from. Until the mystery was revealed. The trees had their birds in them. A colourful display of parrots, orioles and long-crested cockatoos. Someone shouted, “The birds are warning us!” But it was too late. When we tried to turn around, the boat was surrounded by the forest.’
‘And what happened?’ asked Curtis uneasily.
‘The forest gobbled us up. Swallowed us whole.’
‘That’s more or less what happened to me with the wolf,’ said Pombo after the requisite pause to take a swig.
‘What happened to you if you never left this hole?’
‘I’m from the mountains, and proud of it. Bloody mountains! One freezing winter’s day with a lot of snow, the height of a man at least, I was sent with a message down by the border and bumped into the wolf on my way. It stared at me. I stared at it.’
Everyone remained silent. Pombo marked a bony kind of time by rapping the bar with his knuckles.
‘And what happened?’ asked Lens finally.
‘It ate me.’
Pombo adjusted the knot of his necktie and stared at the harpooner artistically. ‘What did you expect? It ate me! That’s right. The wolf ate me.’ And he waited before delivering the final blow, ‘Just as the forest ate that ship of yours.’
‘You don’t know what the area of calm is,’ replied the harpooner painfully.
Some of the fishing boats still have their festive pennants. The vessels haven’t left port for a month. Haven’t been back out to sea. The sirens sounded on the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. A few days later, with the military coup, they sounded again. A day and a night. Without stopping. In the Academy