Books Burn Badly - Manuel Rivas [73]
Or he’ll come back on foot, upriver, to a bar in the Ribeiro region, in the self-same parish, twenty years later.
‘What are you having?’ asks the bar owner, a man they sometimes call Abisinio, sometimes Silvo. He has a bitter look. His wine isn’t made from the finest grapes.
‘A jug of wine,’ says the outsider.
The barman serves him a jug and cup. Time goes by. The outsider remains silent and motionless. Staring at the jug. The barman comes and goes. Also glances at the jug from time to time.
He doesn’t usually talk to his customers, especially if they’re strangers. When he clears his throat, it sounds like a snarl.
‘What? Not drinking?’
He doesn’t like being a barman. Behind the bar, he feels shut up inside a cage.
‘Not if you don’t serve me,’ replies the customer calmly.
He’s in the same position he was in when he arrived.
‘Customers here serve themselves,’ says the barman, suppressing his anger. ‘We’re all on good terms.’
The outsider then takes his hands out of his pockets. With stunted fingers.
All on good terms.
‘That’s what a dead man’s slap is like,’ related Polka.
The Doorknocker
26 July 1952
All sorts of things are done for money, even killing, the value of life and all that, there are even some executioners on a State salary. When it came to Foucellas, the most wanted resistance leader, apparently they sent him their finest executioner, so he can’t have been as bad as they made him out to be if they sent him an executioner from outside, from Salamanca, the best they had. Not the worst, the best killer. They kept the day and hour a secret, but people knew. Because the executioner got off the train in Teixeiro to have a coffee. And the one who served him realised it was the executioner as if he’d been wearing a badge or uniform. How did he know? From the hands. His hands were refined, manicured, hidden, peeping out of the burrow of their sleeves. And because he added a lot of sugar. No one had ever added so much sugar to their coffee in Teixeiro before. Some even said, ‘He had a good death, they sent him the quickest.’ Some consolation when you’re being garrotted! He had a thirteen-year-old daughter, who went knocking at the governor’s door to stop her father being killed. We were walking by, with our bundles of clothes, and my mother whispered to me, ‘That’s Foucellas’ daughter at the governor’s door.’ Very early, it was cold. The only sound in the city was that of the doorknocker. Everyone walking by, all the office clerks, the squad lugging an enormous carpet, the workers taking down the hoarding from Colón Theatre, the brickies with their tile-coloured pots under their arms, everyone moved away from there, from that sound of a clapper. The sticky trail a broom leaves on the road. The knocker sounding like a clapper made of bone.
The Street Singer
He’s on his way to the censor’s office. Glances at the window of Camisería Inglesa on Real Street. There they are. The musicians’ shirts. This is where all the orchestras and bands buy their costumes. Shirts with lace adornments. Frills, embroidery, tassels, flared sleeves, large collars with sickle-shaped corners. They even have mariachi outfits. A festive assortment of shirts. That zone of intense colours. With the fuchsia shirt. Blasted bees! He should go straight in and get that fuchsia shirt. Not think about it. The day is luminous. All the sea and city mirrors work towards the light. A sin, fuchsia.
Today he’s in civilian clothes. No one’s going to shout out, ‘The censor, Commander Dez, has just bought the fuchsia shirt!’ You can never tell. No, Commander Dez knew he wouldn’t enter Camisería Inglesa this time either. He needed an assistant for such things. He’d already mentioned it at headquarters. Yes, like others, he needed a soldier for his domestic affairs. He carried on. Stopped outside Colón, previously the Faith bookshop. An avant-garde hang-out in the 1930s. With a name like Faith. Who’d have thought it? Words are like shirts. Here we go.