Antón Riveiro Coello

BIOGRAPHY

Antón Riveiro Coello was born in (province of ) in 1964. He studied Law in and presently resides en Boiro (A Coruña), where he works as a civil servant for the Galician government. He is president of the Asociación Cultural Barbantia, Favorite Son of the Town of Baltar, as well as Honorary Judge of the Couto Mixto.

He has been awarded and recognized in a great number of contests such as Álvaro Cunqueiro de Narrativa, Manuel García Barros de novella, Café Dublín de Narrativa, Torrente Ballester (Finalist), Pedrón de Ouro, Manuel Murguía, Camilo José Cela, Breogán de Cuentos and Castelao de Narrativa, as well as some International prizes such as the Max Aub and the NH*** de Relatos.

His books include; Valquiria (1994), Parque Central e outros relatos (1996) A historia de Chicho Antela (1997), A quinta de Saler (1999), Animalia (1999), As rulas de Bakunin (2000, translated to Spanish, Portuguese and Italian), Homónima (2001), Carpeta do Barbanza, Viaxe polo cadrante das sereas (2002), A canción de Sálvora (20030 A esfinxe de amaranto (2003), Limaiaé (2005), Casas Baratas (2005), A voz do lago (2007), Os ollos de K (2007) and As pantasmas de auga (2010).

AUTOPOETIC

The most difficult thing in the world—Ciorán says—is to talk about yourself without exasperating others. A confession can only be tolerated if the author disguises himself as a poor devil, and here is the point of departure, a poor devil born on the 22 of August of the year 1964, in an explosion of flesh and great hope.

An animal! As never seen before! You should revere me everyday just for the pain you have caused me! Mother never missed the opportunity to throw in my face my reluctance to exit. She likes to relive the pain of those two intense days in August, hot and tragic, when the forceps, and her irascible push, flung me into the world, weighing in at a bit more than 5 kilos on the Santa Christina hospital scale. That was something that would never end! I calculate her pain and justify so much suffering with the fame I would later attain of the good-natured baby—it seems that I spent the hours sleeping with such abandon that I never gave up this lethargy, not even to eat. Having just cut your lifeline, a nurse washed you and then wandered the hospital halls cradling and raising up into the air this ball of flesh as if she were carrying the palpable proof of a miracle. Daddy smiles, vain, takes me with his iron hands and after confirming the weight concentrates all his enthusiasm on the phrase that with the passing years became legendary in the family: A son was born to me already young! (from “Neve”. Casas Baratas, 2005)

I spent my first two years in the Xinzo jail because my father was the municipal guard in charge of holding prisoners in custody. From those years, incredible as it seems, I remember something that must have happened soon after I learned to walk.

With a magical ability and an incredible amazement of details, I invoke not only the happy faces of those grandiose heads, but also the spacious image of the room, the tiresome light coming through the two windows, the bare stone of the wall and the creaking of the wood inflicting a mysterious voice on the Bigheads in the Town Hall, those monsters that leave an impression of their extended happiness on the blackboard of my memory. (from “Neve”. Casas Baratas, 2005)

When I was almost three, we moved to a territory that, in time, would become my essential homeland, where I was raised until the age of fifteen: the Casas Baratas=.

I stop at the highest point of this domestic forest, familiar, where our imagination involved wolves and imaginary monsters that fell upon us at night with feline habits. And from here I look for the skyline of my small native country: the Casas Baratas, surrounded now by an urban expansion that is incapable of erasing those two enormous stone landmarks that appear to have enameled the sky in the blue of its small tiles. Still, the construction imposes a footprint of the modern world over the humid plains that are always subject to the geometric sight of the medieval towers, their historical pride wounded by these social buildings, by these two blocks, five halls, fifty homes, almost

= Casas Baratas (Cheap Houses)- public/social housing given to those in need during the 50’s in . two hundred neighbors: a world in itself. They look, still, like two stone boats stranded on the legendary edge of the Antela lagoon, bow pointing south, and a wind of solitude in their urban conception. (from “Neve”. Casas Baratas, 2005)

In the middle of all this, there is a field full of vanished memories in the Salesian boarding schools in Cambados, León, and Ourense, where my biggest passion, my euphoria for music and for the guitar only stands out.

Yes, no less than Richie Blackmore, the musician I strived to be like, and which had become my most devoted vocation, and the same time the most frustrated. Because I wasn’t content to just simply be a famous rock guitarist, but in my dreams I aspired to rub up against this London artist’s talent. I never wanted anything with such passion, and I do not lie when I say that today the Nobel for literature wouldn’t have as much value to me as acquiring, at that moment, this musician’s mastery. In his hands, the guitar became not only a musical instrument, but a poetic expression as well. I tried and tried with a moving insistence in that old guitar with an open bridge, and therefore the strings too far away from the frets (which made the pulsation a painful and bloody act of callousness). I barely achieved a pathetic imitation of Child in Time or Mistreat. At first I thought it was the guitar’s fault. But when I got an electric one in my hands, a Stratocaster imitation, I knew that it had nothing to do with practice or education, but with talent, a type of technique and vision that imposes itself upon the destiny and will of certain people. (from “Mister López & Friend”. Casas Baratas. 2005)

When they opened the Xinzo High School, on the eve in which Tejero gave his pathetic coup d’état, I founded the rock band Sacho with three friends:

…here founded is an excessive word which would rather be changed to assembled, if I refer to the physical aspect our concerts had, before, during, and after which we worked hard. I can’t forget the thrill with which we packed that old Land Rover up to the top with the baffles, the sound board, and the tangle of cables that put us in a jam as we unwound them. The gigs were in discotheques—we didn’t want to do it outside and give away our equipments’ lack of wattage—and our set was quite varied, ranging from our own original songs, lyrics that perhaps already hid my literary calling, to versions of Santana, Scorpions, Police, and because of course, Deep Purple. We also included the Ayatola! by Siniestro Total, which caused a certain enthusiasm among the unconditional (mostly h not very demanding family and friends with ears more than an ear) and that we always played, except on the day of our premiere. On that occasion, apart from the Town authorities, our parents also attended, and Robert, the drummer, backed out completely because of the terrifying respect he had for his father. I remember him livid, sweating, his drumsticks whimsically tucked in between his legs, mumbling his refusal among the nearby hammering applause to debut a song that would make his father clench his teeth due to the pornographic charge of the lyrics. (from “Mister López & Friend”. Casas Baratas. 2005).

After the COU1 and SAT, I did what a lot of people did who are unclear about things: I majored in Law. And although the first three years did not go badly, I dropped out in exactly the fifth year when I met my life partner who is most at fault for me ending up devoting myself to writing. As a State worker and later an employee for the Galician Government, I started entering literary competitions and from there I began to create a kind of solitary workshop in which I learned that there are many things one can capture with words. Of course, I am a huge music lover (my rock star career ended the day my companion fell asleep while I played her a lovely song composed just for her), a lover of literature (Cunqueiro, Faulkner, Nabókov, Sándor Márai, Stefan Zweig, Julien Gracq...), of film (Wim Wenders, Akira Kurosawa, Herzog, Fritz Lang...). Currently, I live in Boir,o where I participate in a beautiful project called Barbantia, which attempts to elevate the culture in the region of Barbanza. Otherwise, I keep on writing, with passion, building castles in the air so that others can inhabit them.

CURRENT GALICIAN LITERATURE AND GALICIAN FICTION IN PARTICULAR

In spite of the never ending process of making the language official, which never fails to bring us bad news, we live in a time of excellent quality literature. To the army of poets who have always blossomed in a country as small as ours, we have to celebrate the huge group of fiction writers that, along with other already consolidated careers, went on to add and achieve some of the biggest objectives that our fiction had, like the revision of theme and form, and re-elaborating and updating old myths.

Today we can proudly state that our fiction shows maturity equal to any other country in the world. I don’t speak of self indulgence, but evidence among which I highlight the penetration of our literature into the international markets, because there are more and more books that are translated into other languages, and I speculate here, with a great welcome from critics and readers. To the successes of Manolo Rivas and Suso de Toro, we add others, like Teresa Moure, who surprises us with their work.

An important part of fiction, also, in the last few years is the number of women with original ideas and quality writing, like Ángeles Sumai, Inma López Silva, Rosa Aneiros, María Reimóndez and many others. Still, I would describe the current panorama as highly individualistic, and free from being categorized as a group. There are discourse modalities of a certain unorthodox kind, more risky and experimental and yet others are more attached to the spirit of conventional literature and as transmitter of an identity. Also, it has to do with many of the authors belonging to a generation influenced by film, the image, and foreign literature, who are strangers to the classics, and to the kind of work that is a type of identitary referent. There is among us an elite literature, and others that are not born with the will to become classics, but to act in a market destined for all publics.

The flaws I would point out about our literary system are the usual ones: invisibility, not only informative (press, radio, television…) but also physical (the absence on the shelves of the main

1 Curso de Orientación Universitaria, previous to SAT. bookshops and in the huge commercial superstores…), the impossibility of professionalism for the writer due to our public minority, etc…

Even so, Galician literature continues to accumulate in that collective desire of the thousand Springs that the master Cunqueiro predicted.

GALICIA AND ITS FUTURE

To Dream

I’ve dreamed of you in this way for a long time, my dove, like a cultivated Couto Mixto==, self- owned, with a world presence, creative, Galician to the core, progressive and dignified. I feel now how the epic poem of the earth flows through these melancholy veins, through this rebirth of races and roses that conquer the silent verses of the old landscapes.

In the ancient silence of the fields I hear the sovereign and identitary word of the oaks rising above the foreign forests. And I feel how the animals return to sign that provisionary contract that unites earth, blood and life.

How easy it is to dream of you clean, my dove, Portuguese, evolved, pacifist, solidary. To watch the progress in the glass eye of a cow, to plant fish in the hope of boats, to secure dreams in the headlines of Galician newspapers, to mouth vernacular intimacies, to repopulate the foreign exiled heart with a flesh red carnation.

Here is my Galicia, that mysterious light that illuminates us, that equalizing mother country, smart and free, who cradles our ears with the Galician word of Shakespeare and the secular joy of the poets, silent inhabitants of Utopia.

== Couto Mixto (Mixed Territory), is a Spanish territory with three villages (Santiago and Rubiás now in the municipality of Calvos de Randín, and Meaus in the municipality of Baltar), located in Ourense, Galicia, by the border of . This land was neither Portuguese nor Spanish for centuries, until the Treaty of Lisbon (1864) gave sovereignty to Spain. Before that, people living there had several privileges, such as not being obligated to go into the army (Portuguese or Spanish) and not needing a license to carry weapons. It was in fact an independent territory. Nowadays, some cultural initiatives attempt to bring back those days and traditions.

STORY

PÍRRULA OR A SPOT IN THE SKY

No one could explain how she learned or how she got a hold of the instrument, but Pírrula played the accordion and did so in the most fascinating way. The pearled piano keys were parched the color of tobacco. Silver filigree adorned the black box and the bellows were made of Portuguese leather. In the field of Pardierio, in front of Domingo’s cantina, Pírrula married more than one couple with her stupendous pasodobles. Neighbors from San Paio and from Meaus came to these spontaneous celebrations. It’s a fact that the red wine brought in from Portugal helped with the turnout, but aside from the flirting and the devilish music that made the dancers press up close against each other, the main attraction was Pírrula’s infatuating playing. Pírrula, a name given to her by Mr. Paco, lived with her grandmother, because the millworker gang of Rubiás, protected by the war and by the rage, took her parents for a stroll in the woods and they were never heard from again, until they were brought back at Christmas time, on the back of Rellas’ exhausted mare, who found them near Covas, next to some somber shrubs. The bodies, covered in dry blood, were an imposing sight and more so for a little girl who had just turned eight. That’s what Mr. Salustiano, the doctor of Baltar, who was famous for miracles based his explanation of the girl’s muteness on. He said, since no one had ever seen her laugh it must mean that she is also deaf. He didn’t change this opinion, even when the news began to circulate that Pírrula had learned to play The Internationale. He insisted that she was deaf mute, and to save his reputation he gathered accredited witnesses in Domingo’s cantina. He performed various tests on the girl, pulling at her ears and tongue and purifying them with holy water from the Virgin of Peneda. When the crowd had surrounded them, Mr. Salustiano grabbed his instruments and declared it with such confidence that it left no room for doubt. ― It is not she who plays. This is how the belief spread that Pírrula was bewitched. Compassion for the girl turned into the type of respect that was very often too much like fear. And so everything that happened was attributed to her: Secundino’s handicap (who at times had tried to court her), the storm of 1950, the bad birthing of the cows, the deaths in the Forno… all the bad things, because Pírrula had nothing to do with the coming of good. Even her beauty ended up becoming an obstacle. There were many who claimed such beauty was damaging. For others it was a call to sin. The truth is that she never had a boyfriend to speak of, until she turned thirty, when at the Randin fair a Portuguese tried to claim her street corner, unfamiliar with the problems of conscience. He sang a few verses to his guitar in front of a pair of merchants who were bidding for a cow:

¡Paxariño pirruleiro que esgromas o pexegueiro, váiteme axiña de aí marcha para o teu ameneiro!

Pírrula fell in love with him instantly, not because of his talented guitar playing, or his large, black eyes, but because he was the first to discover the significance of her name. Pírrula was the scientific name of the bullfinch. This is what Mr. Paco had told everyone in one of his science classes, so he could later nickname her for her reddish hair and the rosy birthmark on her chest, which many claimed was due to a craving her mother, a fierce communist, had during her pregnancy. The Portuguese, attracted by Pírrula’s look of surrender, approached her and said: “Do you know the muiñeira1 from Castrove?” They began to play together beautifully, and the fairgoers piled up around them to witness how they exchanged glances that were already bonded forever in a secret alliance. Since Pírrula didn’t speak, they became close by improvising to the music until dawn. This became a free open festival and many took advantage of the fever of the love affair and danced. They interpreted every piece with such skill, that once again her talents were attributed to her fame as a witch. In the morning they returned together, hand in hand, through the path of the meadow. When they arrived at the crossroads of Santiago de Rubiás, Pírrula looked towards Tosende and said goodbye to her village with a pair of tears. She had made up her mind. Her loyalty was to the Portuguese and she would never, ever, abandon him. They had breakfast at the cantina of Perdeiro, in San Paio, and then told the baker to warn Pírrula’s grandmother of their sudden romance. They paid for the bread and bacon with pasodobles, and then headed into the forest towards San Martiño, staying close to the shade of the oaks and flowering broom shrubs on the hills, because the sun was very strong. Dominated by the flutter of lovers, they went along with strides of great love, like heirs to a secret pact. Exhausted by the journey, they made a stop under the cover of an old fig tree and put set down their instruments, and their efforts, before continuing. Pírrula’s look took on a naughty glow that revealed her excitement. But she knew she couldn’t laugh. “By any chance am I going to have a mute witch as a companion?” The Portuguese parted the hair hanging over her face so delicately that it soaked her soul. They got lost in the first caresses. Pírrula let him do. She had more than enough with trying to control the whirlwind of desire that pressed her stomach and traveled up to her throat in spirals. She remembered the only other time she had been with a man and she now discovered the difference. The fanatical care of his hands, his invisible lips running all over her, the sweet whispers that calmed her, were ways beyond compare. The Portuguese sat her on top of him and he delayed the encounter to look at her carefully. Never before had he seen such beauty. But Pírrula was on fire and didn’t want to wait. Melted by the Portuguese she could not restrain herself. She lowered her underwear a bit and looked blindly for the promising zipper and saw herself riding this man who grabbed at her breasts with mad urgency, while she scratched at the bark of the fig tree, leaving the crazed scars of her desire. Before getting dressed, Pírrula initiated a piece that silenced the optimistic song of the sparrows and the magpies. A blackbird came and stood on the guitar’s sounding box and the noisy wagtails simulated plucking at the hedges of heather. Pírrula’s happiness was so great that she forgot her problem and broke into a half smile that raised her up in the air in an instant. When the Portuguese saw his lover’s shadow on the path it almost scared him to death. The levitation was only a few meters high and lasted an ephemeral moment, like a hop, but long enough to spook the birds that had been drawn by the music. Hanging there in the air, still playing her accordion, Pírrula recognized her mistake and turned off her inopportune smile so

1 Refers to the most popular and most known type of Galician dance. Originally the dance was done in the mills (muiño means mill, muiñeira is the woman miller). she could return slowly to the ground. The Portuguese, with an impossible calm, put on his shirt and said: “It doesn’t matter to me if you are a witch. I don’t care.” Pírrula shook her head to deny it as she buttoned his vest. Having given in to each other and now dressed, they returned to the path and turned at the cruceiro of San Martiño, towards the lush hills of Portugal. When they arrived at the border, the Portuguese sat on a marker that separated the two countries and asked her the question he had been pondering: “So, can you do that whenever you want?” Pírrula nodded yes, and to prove the silent answer and demonstrate her power she showed her smile, and her body began to levitate, little by little, until she noticed that the Portuguese started looking around nervously, worried that someone might see this incredible act, so she once again turned off her smile and repositioned herself on the grass. When they arrived in Sendín, an old woman that was on her way to the fields of Lamalonga spied them in the distance with her eyeglass. She revealed the name of the Portuguese: “Looks like you got married, Servando.” “Looks like it, Mrs. Manola.” What the couple didn’t know is that the news had reached the village before them, thanks to a neighbor who had seen them at the festival in Randín. Servando’s mother, seated in a shadowy hallway, was waiting for them while stripping corn from their cobs: “For a witch, she is quite nice.” “She doesn’t speak, mother. Her name is Pirrula.” “Child, you have the name of the robin2. Pírrula was surprised the lady also knew the origin of her name and kissed her mother-in- law's hands, an old woman who looked older than a hundred years but who was actually only seventy. “Mother, she does not laugh, but you should hear her play.” “Let’s see, then.” Pírrula adjusted her accordion and began to play the jota of Loureses, which provoked a blaze of melancholy in the old lady’s eyes. The neighborhood began to approach the penetrating music, and a party was already on the verge of starting again. You could smell the festivity in the air. Some young people had rushed over to dance. It was Servando who stopped the concert, apologizing that they were too exhausted from the journey. The house was small. There were four oak logs at the foot of a table in the downstairs kitchen, and a pot-hanger held up a pot where all the soups were cooked. In front of the house there was a stable, with a rectangular window made of perpend, where the pigs were kept. And at the high end of the house they had placed a mattress of corn silk in the party dining room. Servando slept there. The old lady slept in a smaller room with a tiny window that looked out on the orchard. The stairs were outside and ended in a hallway made of bad quality wood, half eaten by woodworm. The old lady had prepared her room for them, so the couple could have some privacy, and then took her time downstairs. But such considerations weren’t necessary, because Pírrula and Servando, thrashed by the parties and by lack of sleep, passed out as soon as they laid down and didn’t wake up with the call of the rooster, but almost at lunchtime.

2 In the original Galician version, the mother says that Pírrula is named after the paporroibo (petirrojo, robin). This is because the mother only uses the first part of the name of the camachuelo, (bullfinch) which in Galician is paporroibo real. When the Portuguese opened his eyes and saw Pírrula there in his embrace, a scintillating light illuminating the red spot on her chest, he figured out that this woman levitated with her smile. Little by little he began to realize that it was not a dream, but a disturbing reality. She was truly beautiful, Servando thought. She had well formed facial features and her thick hair covered her shoulders. But…the magic unnerved him. He watched her with a lover’s devotion and tried to think of a solution for this danger in her smile. “Wake up, woman.” Pírrula opened her eyes and blinked at the disagreeable light coming in through the window. “It’s time to eat.” Servando left the room and went to urinate at the ruins of his uncle Xacobe’s house. A little later he brought Pírrula a pitcher full of water, then called his mother who was in the fields picking potatoes. The old lady approached slowly, wiped the sweat from her forehead with a rag and smiled when she saw her daughter in law in the shirt she herself had lent her. “I see you have slept well.” “Mother, sit down on the bed, I have something important to tell you.” Due to the serious tone of his voice, Pírrula guessed the intentions of the Portuguese. She dried her face with a rough towel. The old lady sat down on the bed, next to her son, and thought of sad things. “You know that I love you and it is not in my nature to hurt you.” “I am sure of that, my son.” “Well then. It so happens that this woman, who I am crazy in love with, is bewitched.” The old lady was quiet for a while, but didn’t take her eyes off them. Then she went up to Pírrula and caressed her hands. “That isn’t an obstacle for you to love each other!” “I know, but we want you to know everything. Come here. Pírrula, if you don’t mind.” Pírrula sat on the floor, crossed her legs and smiled for a moment, long enough to carry out the demonstration and levitate. The old lady crossed herself clumsily and closed her eyes because she didn’t want to see her daughter-in-law bang her head on the ceiling. But she didn’t lose her composure. She let the levitating girl return to the floor and then said in a half chuckle: “This will serve us like a miracle for picking the walnuts.” Pírrula kissed the old lady’s hands and thanked her with her eyes. It would be a secret pact between the three of them. Even though everyone thought Pírrula was unhappy because she never smiled, it only took a few days for her to be loved not only at home, but by all of Sendín. She worked like a slave, and so could only play the accordion during moments of leisure, on her break from the mill, during the harvest of potatoes, or at Sunday mass. The priest also asked her to play at all the parish weddings, but the Portuguese had other plans for his witch. In August, he bought a horse and buggy and they journeyed with their guitar and accordion. They used the seething sun as an excuse to start early. They arrived at the Remedios of A Boullosa at midnight and ate octopus at Pucho’s tent. Pírrula was restless and a bit upset because the Portuguese had barely spoken to her during the trip. He had been acting strange, not to mention sullen, for months. He tossed and turned in bed and got up before the sun to go sit on the stairs, busy with thoughts he didn’t share with anyone. But, that afternoon, when the children and young people began to arrive at the festival grounds, right before he was about to command her, she figured out her man’s intentions. And it broke her heart when she understood why he had insisted that today she should wear a pair of corduroy pants instead of a skirt. Pírrula knew right then that their love was to end there, but she decided to wait. The bagpipe players of Parada arrived satiated from the feast they had been invited to and with cheeks the color of wine. One of them, who knew Servando, came close to his ear and said, with the whisper of an insect: “You chose well, Portuguese. But this festival is ours. You have nothing to do here.” “We shall see.” The musicians got on stage, turned off the torches to get ready to fill the bellows, and started playing a muiñeira that brought the first couples out to dance. With the grounds full of people, the Portuguese took advantage of the break after the last song ended and started playing a popular fado with his woman that filled the musicians of Parada with anger, and attracted many who had never heard an accordion. Some came closer, more so because of Pírrula’s beauty than her captivating music. A fight even broke out between the boys of Quinta who competed to get closer to the improvised musicians. The stonecutter of Montealegre had to restrain one of the musicians from Parada so he wouldn’t slam into the back of the Portuquese. Finally, he went off with his box, swearing for himself, and once again got on stage with the other musicians and there they competed with Pírrula and Servando. They played separately and began to receive the first applauses along with some money that the attendees put in the donkey’s packsaddle, which functioned as a collection box. When they were all a bit mesmerized by the music, Servando put down the guitar and asked Pírrula to stop. “Ladies and gentlemen, young and all, listen well. This beauty we have here is my wife and will do an amazing thing. But for that you will need to collect a thousand pesetas.” “What is it?” A blushing girl wanted to know. “First get the money and then you will see how it is well spent.” All of a sudden a man’s drowned out voice opened up a path among the multitudes. Everyone looked his way. Pírrula recognized him immediately. It was Rellas from Tosende. “This young girl is bewitched. She is from my village.” Contrary to what he believed, these words helped the Portuguese in his enterprise and he took advantage of the mystery that Pírrula’s neighbor had divulged freely. The interest grew. The same blushing girl that had shown her curiosity put five duros3 in Servando’s hand and volunteered to collect the rest to see what that rogue had to offer. After collecting much more than he had asked for, the Portuguese looked into the void and with an commanding voice said: “Hold on to your judgments and your heart, young and old, because you will never forget, what you are about to see today.” Servando looked at Pírrula and she immediately got the signal because she sat down on the grass, crossed her legs, started playing a pasodoble and awoke that elevating smile. Everyone put their hands over their faces in awe. The Portuguese, with his back towards Pírrula, smiled and enjoyed himself among the strangers, and among the people down on their knees crossing themselves before this miracle that caused their eyes to roll back into their heads. And he longed for the fortune he would never have, because Pírrula had just changed her smile into a loud cackle and kept on rising. The Portuguese realized his loss when he saw that

3 Old denomination of the ancient 5 peseta coin. everyone squinted towards an insurmountable distance. Servando turned. Pírrula was just a black spot in the sky from where a pasodoble was no longer heard, just the pure song of a bird.