Books Burn Badly - Manuel Rivas [93]
A policeman who said to me on Falperra, on the way to Santa Lucía, ‘Get that starlet out of here.’ I knew he meant Grumpy, but I didn’t like his superior tone. He must have noticed my surprise because he added, ‘Sometimes it’s difficult to tell who’s more stupid, the one on top or the one underneath.’ Who was he to call me names? So I replied, ‘To have authority, the first thing you need to be is polite.’ I lost all the fear inside me. I reacted and out came Griffin’s voice, ‘I wish you’d keep your fingers out of my eye.’ Those in authority in these parts are always resorting to physical or verbal violence. Torture. Inflicted on so many. ‘Those in authority,’ says Polka, ‘are like Judas. The world upside down. In this country, we’re ploughing on the bones of the dead, girl.’
‘Have you any idea who you’re talking to?’
‘Not if you don’t stand on a stool.’
‘For that quip, I’m going to give you a fine, so that you’ll remember me for the rest of your life.’
The milkmaid was the first to protest, ‘What’s that, dummy?’ Then another woman, who put down her basket of sea urchins and made the sign of Capricorn, ‘Colonel, colonel!’
He must have felt alarmed because there were lots of women showing him the horn and calling him Beelzebub, pervert, goatee, so he soon changed his tune.
‘Enough’s enough. On you go now. End of story!’
And they say that words don’t help.
All the same, that man spoiled my day. My mood. I was going to leave the clothes at the house of the judge and painter. My words were in disarray. I started getting nervous. I’d lost Harmony. That made me afraid. Because along came The Horror, my worst memory.
It was back at school. When she came in, like a virgin, with her child. OK, it was a doll, but what did they care if it was a doll or a baby? She carried it in her arms like a baby, came into school and sat down at a desk. I think she came in there because she thought who’s going to hurt me in a school. Well, in a school, if you want my opinion, the first who can hurt you are the children. She unbuttoned her dress and pulled out a breast to feed the baby. Yes, I know, it was a doll. It wasn’t even a china doll. It was stuffed with sawdust and had a head made of maize husks. But she behaved like a Madonna. Every gesture she made was genuine. She’d come into school because it was winter and children were there. And because she’d run away from home. Who could possibly hurt her in a school? She came in slowly, without a sound, I reckon she was barefoot, and we only realised she’d occupied an empty desk, the one at the back, from the look of shock on our teacher’s face. Our teacher was frightened. She didn’t know what to do. You could see in her eyes she’d never been taught what you have to do when a woman carrying a doll in her arms, pretending it’s a baby, comes into school in search of refuge. Until her husband showed up. Took off his belt. Whipped the floor with it as if whipping the school’s back. The roof and beams. He hit the floor, but we looked up at the ceiling since it seemed everything was falling down. I never thought a leather belt could make so much noise. That day, I saw everything was unpaired. Including the teacher’s eyes.
‘Stop that now!’
‘Stop what? What am I supposed to do? Blasted night and day!’
Again and again. He whipped the floor. The back of the earth.
In front of the chocolate shop, with Harmony sitting down, drinking her chocolate, pretending not to see me, not to know me even, I must look bad, I must have unpaired eyes, a bundle of unpaired thoughts, the taste of that school