Sunday, April 27, 2003		Books

What the pencil remembers
Vikramdeep Johal

The Carpenter’s Pencil
by Manuel Rivas. Translated from Galician by Jonathan Dunne. Vintage Books, UK.
Pages 166. A33.95

THEY say the pen is mightier than the sword. What about the pencil? Take a look at the amazing story of this pencil: It survives the Spanish Civil War, outlasts those who have used it, and conjures up the spirit of one of them. On top of that, when a protagonist comes face to face with death, it grows to the length of a spear and scares the life out of her.

With this mighty little thing, an imprisoned painter draws the portico of a cathedral, substituting the faces of his fellow Republican prisoners for those of prophets and angels. His artistic activities are brought to an abrupt end by a prison guard, Herbal, who reluctantly puts him to death to save him from torture by other guards.

Carrying the pencil as a remembrance of the man he has killed, Herbal continues with his job of keeping tabs on a key prisoner named Doctor Da Barca. The doctor has charisma, courage and great powers of persuasion — qualities which the guard lacks and envies. Above all, Da Barca has Marisa, whom Herbal regards as the most beautiful woman in the world he has seen, and in the one he has not seen.

With wistful eyes, the guard observes the lovers. He discusses their love letters with the dead painter, who "visits" him time and again and becomes his lone soulmate, or rather, his alter ego. Decades later, narrating the love story to a girl, he lyrically describes the couple’s embraces, their kissing in the rain: "I’ve seen man and woman get up to all sorts, but these two, they drank each other up. They licked the water off each other with their lips and tongues. They were so drenched they must have felt naked. They kissed like two fish."

Despite the barbarity of the times and the wretchedness of his own life, Herbal remains responsive to the beauty around him, holding on to the only tangible thing he possesses — the pencil. He does not lose his humanity, even though he has to conceal it for his own good. Ironically, not even the lovers come to know that he has helped ensure their survival. That makes him a fascinating character, deserving of the reader’s sympathy and admiration.

Far from being a grim and sordid tale, The Carpenter’s Pencil entertains the reader with a generous helping of humour. The encounters between Herbal and the dead painter display the writer’s playful imagination. Then there is the doctor, the man with more lives than a cat, who has the audacity to humble officers with his wisecracks.

A significant thing about the novel is that it has been written by a Spaniard. Owing to dictator Franco’s long rule, the most famous prose works about this tragic chapter of Spanish history are by foreigners — George Orwell, Andre Malraux and Ernest Hemingway — writers who witnessed the Civil War and even fought in it. The Carpenter’s Pencil is not in the same league as Homage to Catalonia and For Whom the Bell Tolls, primarily because it bites off more than it can chew. Nevertheless, the bittersweet portrait of people fighting their own wars makes an engrossing read.