Holando had read out the ten commandments of naturism. As they lay sunbathing, naked on the warm rocks, which were carpeted in velvet moss and golden lichen, the cherry pendulum hanging over their lips, measuring time from outside in, everything that was said sounded like the flowering of reason. The fourth commandment: ‘Thou shalt not forget to bathe every day in cold water’. This got a boo. ‘Where’s the prophet from?’ ‘Dr Nigro Basciano is from Brazil.’ ‘That explains it.’ As for the rest, they were in agreement. Until the tenth one: ‘Thou shalt not eat meat or murder the poor animals, but be merciful to them. Mens sana in corpore sano. Finis. Amen.’
There was a pause, which lasted as long as the cherries.
‘After the celebrations you mean!’ exclaimed Polka finally.
‘What?’
‘All that being merciful to animals.’
‘You treat everything as a joke,’ said Holando. ‘Slaughterhouses are a horrific spectacle. Go down to Orzán when there’s a slaughter. The sea stained with the blood of animals. It’s a prehistoric shame. Cows should be sacred here as well.’
‘That’s why we eat them,’ intervened Anceis, who rarely spoke. Aurelio Anceis was serious and thoughtful. When he did speak, he seemed to regret it afterwards. He was about to leave for Pasai San Pedro to join a Basque cod-fishing trawler. He had only two days. He was also a poet. A secret poet. He’d started writing what he called ‘SOS poems’ in the wake of the seafaring poet Manoel Antonio, the avant-garde author of From Four to Four. He hadn’t published any even in his friends’ newspaper Brazo y Cerebro. One of the few people he showed them to was Arturo da Silva. He saw a connection between writing poems, as he understood it, and boxing.
‘Just like Christ,’ he added.
‘I don’t understand the comparison,’ replied Holando.
‘Why did people want Barabbas released and Christ crucified? It was, so to speak, a question of gastronomic quality. Who to eat. The divine tastes better. A kind of homoeopathy. The cult of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Holy Week with its celebration of Calvary and the Crucifixion. The Sacrament of Communion. The need to feed on what’s sacred. Greek singers ate crickets, the athletes ate grasshoppers.’
He heard them laugh and blinked. He’d made them laugh, no one had imitated his voice. His friends were laughing. They were good fun. They talked of revolution as if it were a party. For days now, they’d been preparing a trip to Caneiros. There was going to be a special train. Then they’d take boats up the Mandeo’s sparkling waters to the heart of the forest. There’d be libertarian speeches, plenty of food and music, lots of music. It was a beautiful day, heaven on earth, it was a sin not to be happy. So he said:
‘Sorry.’
Actually he was thinking about a poem in which words were crumbs of bread on an oilskin tablecloth. He hadn’t slept all night; for the first time, his body seemed aware it would soon leave land on a long journey. The fingers of silence, working like moth wings, had polished rounded breadcrumbs with the inflamed accuracy of the beads of an astral rosary. One of those rounded crumbs was the sun on that second Sunday in July.
‘Sorry, Holando.’
‘You’ve nothing to be sorry about. What I’m saying is we don’t have to sacrifice animals in order to survive. In a more civilised society, there’d be more than enough food. It’s in the richest countries where most animals are sacrificed needlessly. Do you know why the buffalo almost died out on the great American prairies? Because of its tongue. The Indians used everything; wholesale slaughter was down to the whites. Buffalo tongue was a fashionable dish in New York restaurants. Buffalo Bill was a killing machine, an industrial-scale hunter. He’s said to have killed more than three thousand buffaloes in a day singlehandedly.’
‘Three thousand?’
They gazed out over the ripe Elviña valley and on to Granxa by the River Monelos. Three thousand were a lot of buffaloes. At that time, at the turn of the century, four million buffaloes were being slaughtered each year. Four million tongues. With the bones, they could have built another Wall of China. They lacked a monumental imagination.
‘Holando’s right,’ said Arturo da Silva. ‘That really would turn things upside down if we stopped being carnivorous. You know what the monks of Oseira used to do during Lent, when it was forbidden to eat meat. They’d drop pigs in the river and then fish them out with nets. The farmers, who couldn’t get a whiff of bacon for fear of being excommunicated, went to the abbot to protest, but the abbot replied, “Anything in a net counts as fish!”’
Galicia’s lightweight champion put his head and elbows on the mossy ground and stretched his legs athletically up in the air. Head down, he said, ‘I need a steak for boxing.’
Terranova approaches him. He walks comically, like a barefoot Chaplin, carrying a stalk of hay like an imaginary stick, and points with it at the champ’s penis while reciting a classic line from his dockside repertoire: ‘I am that vast, secret promontory you Portuguese call the Cape of Storms.’ Arturo can’t stand being tickled with the straw and can’t help laughing at the irony. He jumps to his feet and chases after Terranova, who’s already cleared a gorse bush, scaled a crag and is standing on top like a statue on its plinth. He covers and uncovers himself with his hands, ‘O thou, Great Prick, who art fallen low! Lurdo di Columnata! Poor bacon of mine cured in Carrara marble.’
His skin was so brown it gave the impression he’d spent his life naked in the sun. And he sprang about the rocks without having to watch his feet. The school of fishing for barnacles on Gaivoteira, Altar, Cabalo das Praderías, the great outcrops underneath the lighthouse. How he loved an attentive audience he could sing to, amuse with his dockside knowledge, this international wit that charmed old Master Amil during his evening classes at the Rationalist School! Terranova climbed a natural step. Covered and uncovered his sex.
‘It’s not my fault. Luba, the girl from the Normandie, told me, “If it’s small, it’s not your fault but Baba’s.” “Who’s Baba?” “Who do you think? The devil. He used superhuman force against you, a potency greater than yours.” Hearing that from a stewardess on board the largest steamship in the world left me a wreck. “Is there a cure, Luba?” “Of course there’s a cure. Travel round the world.” And she burst out laughing. You should have seen the teeth on that woman. They say, after the fire in Lino’s Pavilion, only the organ keys remained intact. Well, that’s what Luba’s teeth were like. They should put her portrait as a figurehead on the bows of the Normandie. She’s so cheerful it’s frightening. “What do you mean, Luba,” I said to her, “travel round the world?” You should see those teeth. The Normandie’s most valuable asset. It’s thanks to them the steamship keeps moving.’
‘Forget about that. What’s the cure?’
‘Read Brazo y Cerebro! And obey the commandments of naturism.’
Holando chucked a pebble at his belly-button. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘I’m sorry, I can’t say. It’s against all my religions.’
‘Even better then.’
‘Luba said, “The woman should be sky and the man earth.”’
‘And that gives you a bigger penis?’
‘It gives you a bigger everything, darling.’
‘Here we are, drying out like gods.’
‘Like eels. Don’t talk to me about gods.’
‘Greek gods,’ said Holando. ‘I like them. They spent the day ascending and descending between the two worlds. They weren’t afraid of slipping on the fig-leaf. Prometheus was a libertarian. The first to break the chains. Dionysius too. We should take him to Caneiros as our patron saint. That’s to say nothing about Aphrodite, Athene. .’