The Carpenter's Pencil by Manuel Rivas Read Free Book Online

what I said. The main struggle is waged in the rearguard.”

9

    AT THE PRISONIN CORUÑA THERE WERE HUNDREDS of inmates. Everything seemed to work in an organized, more industrial way. Even the outings at night. They were taken on foot to Campo da Rata, by the sea-shore. Sometimes, during the volleys of firing, the prisoners who wore white shirts would shine out in the sails of light emanating from Hercules Lighthouse. The sea would low along the cliffs from Punta Herminia to San Amaro, like a deranged cow at the windows of the empty feeding troughs. After each volley, a silence of human lament would be heard. Until the litany of the mad cow started up again.
    One of the ways in which the night escorts entertained themselves was by postponing death. Sometimes, from among the prisoners who had been selected to be murdered, one remained alive. That piece of luck, that random life, made everything even more dramatic, before and afterwards. Before, because a tiny and capricious ray of hope impeded the sympathy of those in the line, like pebbles along the route. Afterwards, because the one who came back would certify the horror in the terror of his eyes.
    One eveningat the beginning of September, he was standing on his own in a watchtower, following a cormorant in flight, when the painter’s voice spoke to him, “Try and be a volunteer tonight.” Unafraid that he might be heard, he replied angrily, “Go to hell.” “But, Herbal, surely you’re not going to leave him now?” “Go to hell, painter, haven’t you seen the way he looks at me? It’s like he’s sticking two syringes in my eyes. When Marisa comes to see him, he reckons it’s out of choice I stand in the middle listening to what they say and not even letting them touch fingertips. His trouble is that he’s no idea what an order is!” “Well,” the painter told him, “you could turn the occasional blind eye.” “I have done, you know I have, I let them touch each other’s fingertips.”
    “And what would they say to each other?” Maria da Visitação asked, joining her fingertips.
    “There was a lot of noise. There were so many inmates and visitors they couldn’t make themselves heard even at the top of their voices. They would come out with the sort of things lovers say, but a bit stranger.
    “He said that, as soon as he was free, he would go to Oporto, to Bolhão Market, and buy her a bag of coloured beans called marvels.
    “She said she would buy him a bag of hours. She knew of a trader in Valença who sold hours of lost time.
    “He said they would have a baby girl and she would turn out to be a poet.
    “She saidshe had dreamt they had already had a baby boy years ago, he had taken off on a boat and was now a violinist in America.
    “And I thought these were hardly worthwhile occupations at such a time.”
    That night, Herbal was waiting to go as a volunteer with the escorts when it was time for the outing. This was a curious fact. It was never announced but, as if it had something to do with the moon, everyone knew when it was a night of blood. In the firing squad, with Doctor Da Barca in front of him, he pretended to care even less, as if he were setting eyes on him for the first time. But then, when he aimed, he remembered his uncle the trapper and said with his look, “I wish I didn’t have to, my friend.” The prisoners, well versed in the art of martyrdom, tried to remain upright on the piles of rubbish in Campo da Rata, but the strong sea breeze made them flap like clothes hung from the cable of a ship. The first to shoot, to open the season, waited for a sail of light to pass, so that there would be a longer period of darkness. It felt as if they were firing into the wind. A little stronger and a gust of the north-easterly would bring down the dead on top of them.
    Doctor Da Barca continued to remain upright.
    “Take him,” the painter whispered urgently in his ear. “Move!”
    “This one’s coming back!” Herbal said. And he