Books Burn Badly by Manuel Rivas Page B

friendship. But in the end he loved him like no other. Curtis looked after the best of himself. To start with, he carried the songs, all the songs, in his head. Luís’ memory lived inside his friend’s. And he didn’t hold back on the adjectives. Portentous. Curtis’ memory was truly portentous. He said it in syllables, por-ten-tous, and with his right hand rotated an imaginary bulb in the air. Or, with both hands, his fingers were orbits, a celestial globe. Such gestures were precious gifts to Curtis. He felt his memory. Was aware of carrying it and that it was comfortable. Arturo had taught him always to protect his head. His head worked for his body and so his body should protect his head. Even his legs, dancing in the ring, were taking his head into account. And there was his memory, like a child with wide open eyes, riding on him.
    The idea of a child on his back was something that stuck in his mind, an image his memory had of itself after a visit.
    Neto, a friend of Arturo da Silva’s, had had a fight the day before in the bullring and the words hurt as they came out. His eyebrow had split open and they’d stitched it up there and then, without anaesthetic. He also had knocks and bruises and bloody ribs at each commissure of the lips and eyelids. And his nose displayed the enormous surprise of prominent things that have survived an unexpected catastrophe.
    Curtis and Luís Terranova had come with Arturo and another boy from Shining Light who was a boxing fan, Pepe Boedo. They’d come to see the victor. And now they were feeling a little disappointed. According to local legend, Neto was a kind of gladiator. So they’d been expecting to hear a description of the fight, a glowing account of his exploits, but instead they were shown into a poorly lit room. The boxer had his feet in a bucket of hot water. Around his ankles, the bubbles looked like a flower arrangement, which was the only concession the scene allowed the hero. Even Carmiña, his wife, appeared to be forging the seven swords of Our Lady of Sorrow, though what she was in fact doing was hammering at a slab of ice in the kitchen. She’d bring in handfuls of irregular pieces, some like rocks, others like nails, for him to choose.
    A newspaper was lying on the floor. It seemed to have been written there. Printed in that very room. The matrices of the letters scattered by Neto’s broken anatomy.
    CHAMPION’S CALVARY
    Good headline, thought Curtis. That newspaper was a bit like a mirror. He watched Arturo da Silva pick it up off the floor and casually put it out of sight.
    Neto spoke through the cut in his eyebrow. Monosyllables, short sentences that pushed their way through the stitches. The rasping of words. Craters in some sentences where syllables had been punched out. Arturo da Silva administered the necessary dose. They now understood the reason for their visit was to cure, not celebrate, his victory.
    ‘All I can see are clouds. Your face looks like a storm’s coming.’
    ‘Every cloud has a silver lining. Who was it told me that rubbish?’
    ‘Could have been me,’ said Arturo with the same irony.
    ‘Culture’ll be the end of you, Arturo. Silver lining, my foot! Are you still attending the Rationalist School?’
    ‘In the evenings. Occasionally.’
    ‘I liked it, but I’d doze off. Without my knowledge, as I lay snoring on the desk, old Amil would use me to talk of the evolution of species.’
    Curtis and Terranova also attend Master Amil’s evening classes. Arturo persuaded them. Curtis’ first teacher had been Flora, the Girl, the Conception Girl. She hated being interrupted when she was teaching him letters and numbers, but then she still held her tongue. Looking back at his life, in front of the pyres, Curtis remembered the last time he’d seen Flora, when she caused an earthquake in the Academy.
    ‘I’m leaving,’ she said in the dining-room.
    No one seemed to have heard anything. They carried on eating. The suspense of spoons