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Il
lapis del falegname
Manuel
Rivas
Feltrinelli,
pp.143
Literature
Manuel Rivas is one of the most representative figures of contemporary
Spanish culture. The secret lies in the magical evocation that pervades
his pages, where the reader feels as if he or she is always moving a
little above the lines, where the poetical touch, the rigorous narrative
and the dialogue between human beings form a single wave in the sea
of history. The pencil is red and made of wood, but in Herbal’s memory
it leaves a deep mark. Now he is old and spends his time in an old brothel
near Vigo in Galicia, close to the Portuguese border - but he had once
been a corporal in the prison where the fate of political prisoners
was decided. As such he had been witness, accomplice and perpetrator
of atrocities and injustices during the Spanish Civil War. Arbitrary
imprisonment, tortures, violence, summary justice, mice, fleas and hunger.
Herbal, the poor devil, is not a bad guy. He is loyal to military laws
and respectful of the uniform that enabled him to escape a hard and
poor childhood, with an affection for the red pencil which he considers
a lucky charm that ties him to a better fate. Intriguing then, at narrative
level, is the conflict created between him and a special prisoner -
doctor Da Barca. There is no doubt about it, the doctor, leader of the
political wing of the prison, is intelligent, highly worthy, with a
considerable degree of humanity and empathy. He cannot be ignored or
subdued, or reduced to a simple number in a cage. Admiration, envy,
hostility, anger fill the prison guard in turn for fifteen long years.
Then after serving his sentence, Dr. Da Barca goes to Mexico and Herbal’s
story changes; he himself becomes a prisoner after committing a murder.
So, when after fifty years, the old and brutish Herbal reads the obituary
notice of the doctor and his wife, he become unconsciously aware of
having fought a battle lost from the start, with himself on the losing
side. Finally he admits that they were the most beautiful and cleanest
part of his life. The skill of the writer lies in his ability to make
his characters authentic and not pathetic in their everyday pains or
what Dr. Da Barca defined, even more tremendously, the “memory of pain”.
His merit is in having painted the passion of a love story intertwined
with an ideal and wrapped it all up in a souvenir photo. All drawn with
a single wooden pencil, for Camillo Diaz Balino, the Spanish painter
murdered in 1936. (traduzione Interpres sas-Giussano)
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