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

snatched at him swiftly like a hunter carrying a live wood pigeon by the wings.
    Anyone whoreturned from the journey to death became part of a different order of existence. They would sometimes lose their mind and power of speech on the way. To the escorts themselves, they became a kind of invisible, immune being, who had to be ignored for some time until they resumed their mortal nature.
    But Doctor Da Barca was sought again after only a couple of days.
    “Wake up, didn’t you hear the bolts?” the painter alerted Herbal, shaking him by the ear. “Uh-uh, not this time,” the guard said to the voice. “That’s it. Leave me alone. If he has to die, I hope he’s struck down on the spot.” “Listen. Are you going to give up now? You’ve no risk involved,” said the painter. “I haven’t?” Herbal replied, on the verge of shouting. “I’m almost going mad, or doesn’t that seem much to you?” “It’s not bad for a time like this,” said the painter laconically.
    The guards at the main gate had let a group of escorts into the prison, people he did not know, except for one who sent a shiver running down his spine, he who had seen it all before: a priest he had come across at an official ceremony, now wearing a blue shirt and with a pistol on his belt. They scoured corridors and cells, picking off men from a list. “Is that everyone?” “There’s one missing. Daniel Da Barca.” The muffled silence of a wake. The torch lit up a bulge on the ground. Dombodán. Herbal saying, “That must be him.” But then, the ghost’s determined voice, “Who is it you’re after?” “Daniel Da Barca.” “Yes, that’s me, over here.”
    “Now what?” Herbal asks, unsure what to do. “Follow them, you fool!” the painter tells him.
    The wordwent around the cells. Doctor Da Barca was being taken out for a second time. As if this were as far as misfortune could go, the prison spewed out all the pent-up shouts of despair and rage from that never-ending summer of 1936. The pipes, the bars, the walls, a fierce percussion affecting men and things.
    On the way, on the shore of San Amaro Beach, Herbal was saying, “This one’s mine. A personal matter.”
    He dragged Doctor Da Barca down to the sand, punched him in the stomach and brought him to his knees. He grabbed his hair, “Open your mouth, for Christ’s sake.” The barrel between his teeth. “Better not break them,” thought the doctor. He put the barrel in his mouth. At the last moment he lowered the trajectory.
    “One queer less,” he said.
    In the morning some washerwomen found him. They cleaned his wounds with sea water. They were disturbed by some soldiers. “Where did this one come from?” “Where do you think? From the prison, like all the rest.” They gestured towards the dead. “What are you going to do with him?” the women asked. “Take him back, what else are we going to do? Get our balls chopped off?”
    “Poor man! Is there no God in heaven?”
    Doctor Da Barca had a clean wound. The bullet had come out the back of his neck without affecting any vital organ. “He’s lost a lot of blood,” said Doctor Soláns, “but with a bit of luck he’ll heal.”
    “Motherof God! It makes me want to believe in a miracle, a message. Even in hell there are certain rules,” the prison chaplain remarked. “Wait until the court-martial. Then they can shoot him as God intended.”
    The conversation was being held in the governor’s office. The governor was equally ill at ease, “I don’t know what’s going on at the top, but they’re very anxious. They think this Doctor Da Barca should have been dead some time ago, when the Movement started. They don’t want him being brought to trial. It would seem he has dual nationality and the whole thing could get quite out of hand.”
    He approached the office window. In the distance, near Hercules Tower, a stonemason was chiselling stone crosses. “In confidence, Father, I shall tell you what I know.