‘What things?’
‘What do you think? That praise of Nazism. You should have censured yourself, damn it! You have to know how to control yourself. Change style.’
‘Look who’s talking!’
‘I was different. I was a Catholic, remember? The katechon. The one who draws the line. That’s what I’m doing.’
‘Hang on a minute! You’re not the only one. I also draw the line. Mark words in red. It’s not so easy to keep words in line. They’re like cockroaches or rats. They live underground, in sewers, among tombs. They’re like insects. Bacteria. It’s easy to stop men in their tracks, but it’s not so easy to contain words. Silences, pauses, are part of language. A man in silence, if he’s honest, is dangerous.’
‘You should have censured yourself, Dez.’
And so on. Banging on about it. There was something perverse about recommending control to a censor. He also could return to the past, if he wanted, like a dog to its vomit. Remind Samos of who he was. The university student who fancied himself as a Catholic intellectual, beholden to the idea of a benevolent God, still reluctant and hesitant on the eve of the coup, like that day in Pontevedra Square when he trembled in front of Arturo da Silva, the boxing plumber, who grabbed his pistol from his hand and chucked it into the sea in Orzán. ‘Weapons are not toys, young man,’ he told him and threw it over the heads of bathers, a parabola seen by everyone, how embarrassing, though he took his revenge, how a man can change in one month, the sudden stimulation of the cultivated Catholic, aesthete, orator, bibliographer, how the blood rises to his eyes and the once cowardly student is ready for anything, even he, Dez, was surprised, what resolve, what firm steps, his pulse is steady, armed and in uniform he looks taller, stronger, his subtle voice has become more daring. He’s now in charge. He’s standing with him, in front of the pyres of books, down by the docks.
‘The Divine Sketch!’
‘Manuel Curros Enríquez. Straight in the fire!’
‘Remember, Samos?’
He didn’t know why he chose Samos as his rival in that nightmare, that night of sticky hours, of a melting clock. Why he conducted such a tense dialogue, since they were on the same side and of the same opinion. The ending, however, never changed. The mere mention of burning books dissipated the scene. All the characters fell silent. Disappeared. The nightmare was officially over. There was no specific instruction. They hadn’t assembled on purpose to agree on perpetual silence, nor had it been suggested at some meeting. The burning of books had simply ceased to exist. The pact of silence applied to the subconscious as well.
No. 5 Chanel Paris.
Everything was contained in that bottle.
It took up an entire page of ABC.
It was like a strange event that captivated his eyes. He realised they were being disobedient, weren’t the slightest bit interested in the articles or reports on the mournful, doctrinal pages of Arriba. All the news and charm were in the emerging publicity.
The censor would have liked to hold that bottle in his hand.
Yes, ABC had much more publicity and its superior, glossy pages showed off the advertisements and emitted the tinkle of money being paid for large spaces: the plots of land in Torrelodones, attention, girlfriends of doctors, engineers, professionals, come and visit the flats being built in the Pilar district. More shampoos, more flexible mattresses, more electrical appliances. On the leisure pages, the eyes were drawn to the large advertisements for fashionable nightclubs in Madrid, such as Black Swan and Moulin Rouge. One of the advertisements was for a Kelvinator refrigerator, which had a smiling woman next to it with an American flag in one hand and a Spanish flag in the other. He got up. In the fridge, there was only a cauliflower and a plate with flakes of cod on it. Both things looked yellow, as if stained by the interior light of a prison. He’d been ‘on night duty’, what in military terms he called not having slept, tossing and turning. He slammed the fridge door shut and started pacing up and down the corridor, a manic-depressive walk in which he went from a sorrowful, reflective state, practising something as difficult as a seductive excuse, to a progressive state of war. The way he walked matched his mood. There was a pause. He put on the record of ‘La favorita’ and sat down on the edge of the sofa to wait, in the secret hope that the thickness of the music would give way to the sound of Luís Terranova arriving, a key turning, a door opening that changes everything. He murmured sounds of regret. Felt happy. Fine. His singing kept the romance company. Vien, Leonora, a’ piedi tuoi serto e soglio. . Of what importance was the time? Who could be disturbed by the sublime? Rest, sleep, all you cuckolds, while bel canto’s High Command on permanent night duty discusses a prince’s fate in a room of curtains with turbulent folds, like Sotomayor’s sumptuous, warlike sky in his paintings of enhanced bigwigs. That’s what I call having a painter to hand. Taking midgets to the heights. He got up at the end of the music and went over to the window. He could easily imagine himself in a portrait by Sotomayor. Conquerors painted with conquering paint. Successful outcome guaranteed. Needless to say, Sotomayor, Director-General of Fine Arts, was out of his reach. The ranks of painting. What about his pupils? Of the ones he knew, there was none he liked, who was up to the task, without being decadent or abstract. Chelo Vidal was, without doubt, a good painter. Nothing in common with the school of Sotomayor, of course, her art was semi-naive like Chagall’s. Her realism had mystery. That was the word. Now that he thought about it, she put aura on the canvas. The judge was right. She should be better known. Leave the provinces. Change theme. She couldn’t spend her whole life painting those women with things on top of their heads. Even if she had a special way of doing it. No, they weren’t typical scenes. It wasn’t folk-art. The women she captured out and about turned into goddesses on the canvas. That chap from the shipping company who bought everything of hers was smart. Before she finished a painting, he’d already bagged it. ‘Jews,’ Ren said to him one day laconically. He did look a bit like a Jew. His surname was Loureiro. Laurel, the name of a tree. Apparently anyone named after a tree is of Jewish ancestry: Maceiras, Carballo, Pexegueiro, Nespereira, Freixo, Salgueiro. . Apple, Oak, Peach, Medlar, Ash, Willow. . But that would make half of Galicia Jewish! Lots to think about. That Ren doesn’t even trust his shadow. You can’t live like that. Doesn’t even trust the dead. He told him he had to calm down. ‘You won’t have a single enemy left, Ren. Leave a cripple for the museum at least. Don’t take your duty so seriously.’ He said it as a joke. But the humorous side of Ren’s brain wasn’t very well developed. ‘I don’t do it out of duty,’ he replied. ‘I do it because I want to. We all have our pleasures and this is mine.’ One day, he had to cut him short. Because of Luís Terranova, who else? ‘That assistant of yours, that singer. .’