Books Burn Badly - Manuel Rivas [99]
‘Wasn’t the storm just splendid?’
He heard this himself from the Caudillo’s wife, Mrs Carmen Polo, who was presiding over the show with her grandchildren. He’d been forewarned, however, about instigating speech and didn’t say anything, not even thank you. The whole week concentrating on onomatopoeias and galeforce winds. How to blow down a tuba and shake a sheet of metal. But it didn’t matter that he kept his mouth shut. Quite the opposite. It was clear the Head of State’s family were used to the bewilderment of their subjects. Besides, it was time for the presents. Gabriel got a sheriff’s outfit with a revolver on a belt and a star with the letters USA. And there was Leica, Uncle Sebastian, taking photos, looking rather sozzled, as the judge would say, since he always drank before an official engagement. You never knew what Leica’s photos would be like, though the worst of them weren’t bad. He linked the end result with the camera’s mood. He had a reputation for conquering with his camera, which made it easier to work with both men and women, since whoever posed for him did so with a question mark and this always makes for a better pose. Or does it? Leica stroked his head and murmured, ‘Wonderful, Gabriel!’ And then to himself, in a whisper, ‘Wonderful, grotesque, wonderful.’ When the judge came over, relieved and happy, Leica took a photo of them together. To get a smile, he’d always ask the judge to say thirty-three, ‘Say thirty-three,’ but the judge never heeded his petition. It was a joke or something Gabriel didn’t understand. All the photos Leica took were very serious. But this time he said, ‘The storm was the best!’ And the judge smiled for the photo.
His father had rehearsed with him. Asked Chelo to teach him. ‘Teach him what?’ ‘To do a storm well.’ ‘I’ll teach you something else first,’ Chelo agreed. ‘To walk like a leading actor. When you cross the stage and go to your corner, you have to walk as if you were Boreas himself, god of the wind. And forget the wings. Either you’re a god of the wind or you’re an angel. An angel doesn’t go about frightening sheep.’ ‘This is The Mountain Goat,’ the judge pointed out. ‘I’m the mountain goat up on the mountainside and I’ll eat whoever should dare to cross this line!’ The two of them burst out laughing. Perhaps the last time they laughed together like that, openly, freely, Gabriel remembers.
‘It may not be right,’ said the judge, ‘but he has to wear wings. Those are the instructions and we’re not going to change them now. The important thing is to sound like a storm, like a strong wind. You have to blow down the tuba and shake the sheet of copper for the whole city to hear.’
‘You’d better take him to the lighthouse,’ suggested Chelo seriously. ‘Singers used to go there, to the rocks at the foot of Hercules Lighthouse, to fight with the air and expand their capacity.’
‘We get to the lighthouse and what’ll we do there? Start shouting?’
Outside his usual haunts – his study, court, the game preserve – the judge was a man on the defensive, on permanent alert. ‘Besides, it’s August, the weather’s good. There’ll be loads of people. They’re going to say . . .’
‘What are they going to say?’
‘A madman shouting and a child playing the tuba. I’m not Dalí. I’m a judge.’
The three of them went to the lighthouse in the Hispano-Suiza. Samos first looked for a remote place. Gazed out to sea. Tried to make out the Sisarga Isles, but it wasn’t a clear day. There was a lazy, stubborn mist. By the time he realised, he could