The Carpenter's Pencil by Manuel Rivas

book. Sometimes he would leave it open in his lap and deep in thought gaze at the film the sky was projecting on the balcony or close his eyes in a daydream. He gave the servants instructions that he should not be disturbed, and they invented a new expression, as if this were an age-old custom, “His lordship is with the book.”
    The grandfather’s obsessions were sacred and no-one had given too much thought to this sudden interest, ascribing it tothe softening of the head that comes with age. But one day he took a step forward, appeared before his family, in the dining room, and recited the first stanza of Jorge Manrique’s
Coplas
on the death of his father. The effect it had, grandmother Leonor’s emotion and the others’ astonished expressions, opened the door to a dimension of human triumph that he had not known existed. Benito Mallo had a problem, however. He was so practically minded that he confused the conclusions he came to, even those that were false, with the natural order of life.
    On the day Marisa made her debut, when the banquet had been cleared away, her grandfather stood up and with his teaspoon clinked a glass like a bell calling for silence. He had spent the night before shut up in the study, and had been heard talking to himself and declaiming in different registers. Here was a man who despised speeches. Actions speak louder than words. “And yet today,” he said, “I wanted to say something straight from the heart, like water rising at the soul’s source. And what better opportunity than this festive occasion on which we celebrate, not without nostalgia, the spring of life, the flower’s awakening, the passage from innocence to Cupid’s sweet arrows?”
    One or two people cleared their throat and Benito Mallo silenced them with a glare out of the corner of his eye.
    “I know that many of you will be surprised by these words, and even I am not above the mockery more sentimental feelings receive in this day and age. And yet, my friends, there are times in life when a man needs to pause and take stock.”
    As ifspeech and eyes journeyed along separate paths before converging at a single point, look and voice hardened. “I don’t beat about the bush. To eat or to be eaten. That is the question. I have always defended this principle and I think I can say, with all modesty, that I shall be leaving my family rather more fortune than ill-fated destiny reserved for me in the cradle. But man cannot live by bread alone. He must also cultivate the spirit.
    “Meaning culture.”
    As he spoke, the most implacable Benito Mallo’s eyes slowly panned the assembled company, transforming the most ironic and amused expressions into attentive servility.
    “Culture, gentlemen! And, within culture, the most sublime art of all. Poetry.
    “With discretion and humility, I have recently given over some of my most intimate waking hours to her. I have sown the fields that lay fallow. I am well aware that there is a beast in every one of us, in some more than others. But the seasoned man is moved when he listens to the strings of his soul, as the child who winds up a music box in the attic.”
    The speaker took a swig of water and savoured it in his mouth, visibly pleased at pulling off in public this image of the beast and the child he had thought so long and hard about the night before. For their part, the audience of guests maintained a deathly silence, intimidated by Benito Mallo’s blazing eyes, but no less intrigued to find out whether through his mouth it was sarcasm or disorder speaking.
    “The reason for all these preambles is that I did not want to take youcompletely by surprise. This has been a huge step for me, but I judged the occasion worthy of my daring. This is the result. I entrust these my poems to your leniency, aware that the novice’s enthusiasm cannot remedy the lack of experience.
    “To start with, a poem I composed in honour of our elders and ancestors.”
    Benito Mallo seemed to hesitate