Books Burn Badly - Manuel Rivas [59]
His informant was clear. He was on the list. Sooner or later, they’d kill him. To be invisible was to become a soldier, to join the conquering army and go to war.
No sooner did Sada’s enormous bulk reach the front in Asturias, no sooner did it slowly stand up in the trench, than he was shot three times. You’d have thought this is what he wanted. But his fellow soldiers told their bosses he’d been talking all the time about being invisible. He considered himself an invisible man. And this is what they called him: The Invisible. One soldier kept quiet. The one whom he’d told about the child and the matador the night before.
In metaphysical art or in magic realism, there as well, the lame matador pursued him. Pointed with his stick, ‘That’s him, that’s the one, the Invisible.’
I’ll Just Go and See Who It Is
They’re killing all his friends. One by one. He has to send them to a safe place.
‘Safe? Where’s a safe place?’
‘The land of wolves. That’s the safest place nowadays.’
When Pombo talked about the land of wolves, he knew what he was talking about.
From the beam in the shepherd’s hut, Curtis had hung a sack full of sand from the river. A gunny sack which, every time Curtis hit it, gave off a fine spray. Terranova encouraged him with that refrain ‘Yamba, yambo, yambambe!’ But sometimes he fell into a melancholy trance and watched the sack swing from side to side. Seeing him stuck in the station of sadness was something new, since Curtis thought he had a permanent spring in his mind protecting him from nostalgia. He’d sing to the sack. ‘The Moorslayer’s not working!’
Underneath the outer roof, the hut had a second ceiling of large cobwebs, not as resistant as gunny, but thick and well made, like a large canopy. ‘There are no spiders,’ said Terranova one night in the light of an oil lamp. ‘Have you seen a spider? Who’s making these webs, Curtis? They must be tireless spiders, but I haven’t seen any. One day, they’ll envelop us and gobble us up. We have to eat them first. Remember what Holando used to say about the French astronomer who only ate spiders? They’re the messengers of time. We can’t see them because they’re spinning with our eyes, with the threads of light. If we eat them, we might see the stars. Otherwise they’ll eat us. Or the bats will.
‘I should be eating skylark pâté, like the soloist of a French cathedral choir. As Picadillo once said, “Nightingale pie, ladies and gentlemen, for the singers.”’
He’s losing his mind. The spiders have got inside his head, thought Curtis. He left the hut. Was going to make him a present. To lift his spirits. He knew where there was food. In the roadside shrine, up at the crossroads. There was a stone relief showing prelates and pontiffs in the flames of purgatory. And a saint with scales for weighing souls, probably St Michael, whom he’d heard about in the Dance Academy’s kitchen from his mother and Pretty Mary. The weighing of souls would take place at the Last Judgement. How much would a good soul weigh? ‘The scales must be pretty accurate,’ said Milagres, ‘like the ones they use on Galera Street for spices.’ She added, ‘Souls must be like saffron. A gram is worth a fortune.’
In the niche, behind the little lights of burning wicks floating on oil, among flowers, he found the present. The dead didn’t care! Terranova was a spirit as well. He also needed an offering. His spirits needed lifting so that he could sing. Curtis didn’t mind what it was. What he wanted was for him to sing. Never to stop singing or pretending to be his trainer as he laid into the sandbag, the sack of time, with his fists.
‘Yamba, yambo, yambambe!’
He found food. More than on previous occasions. At the end of August, gusts of furtive, northerly wind were already scouring