Images against his face, right up against him as if forcing their way inside. His breathing halted, he tried to say something, choked, eyes filled with water, with pain, with colors, his ears screaming with sounds, with pressure, the unrelenting violence of each fractured maniac second. He could not move, and then I sensed the moment he realized that his body was giving up, and in that moment of nervous relaxation I pushed him back onto the floor.
I punctured his throat once more with one swift and silent sweep of the knife. He felt the last moist warmth of his life enter the back of his throat, the top of his chest, felt his heart choking up whatever laid inside him and give it up to the world, this place, this dark and hollow cabin room, the strange crazy eyes that pressed against him from all sides.
His body shuddered violently, it shook in rapid consecutive motions, his throat pumping jagged red slashes across his chest, across the carpet, his stomach, the front of the dresser. I looked down as he rock-and-rolled through spasm after spasm of reluctant death, as he shivered and clawed and arched his back away from the blood-soaked matting.
I closed my hands over my ears, I bit my bottom lip until I too could taste blood, and then he collapsed.
Still and silent.
Like someone had deflated him.
His hand swung wide and banged against my knee. It rested there, its weight against my own sweated leg, and for some moments I just stared at it, at the blood-covered fingers, at the way they curled up accusingly, pointing towards me, the tension of the skin, the manicured nails, the sheen of polish, the lines in his palm – heartlines, lovelines, lifelines . . .
I moved my leg and the hand hit the carpet soundlessly.
Somewhere a dog barked, and then the sweep of brights as a car passed in the street, seeing everything for a split second and then disappearing into the night.
There was silence but for my own labored breathing, the sound of something building in my chest, the sound of some huge emotional release as I surveyed what I had done.
Condensation ran its fingerprints down the inside of the windows. I could smell cigar smoke, old and bitter, the tang of cheap alcohol, of diesel wine brewed in oil cans and gasoline drums, the ethyl haunt of late nights, gagging, retching into nowhere, into blind-eyed foolish wisdom, thinking that life begins at the base of a bottle or between a hooker’s thighs. I would be reminded of that smell the better part of four decades later, a warm night in Chalmette district, heart of New Orleans.
I was somewhere aloft, somewhere outside of myself looking down. Up there was Aix-La-Chapelle to Canteloupe, Cantata to Equation of Time, Equator to Heraclitus, Heraldry to Kansas, Kant to Marciano, Marconi to Ordovician Period, Oregon to Rameau, Rameses to UFO, Unified Theories to Zurich. Up there was wisdom, the very heart of hearts. Who was I really? The child of a lesser God? I thought not. More so a God from some lesser child.
I leaned back on my haunches and breathed deeply. I closed my eyes and centered myself. What I had done was right there in front of me. What I had done was indelibly painted across the carpet, across the dresser, across the back wall of the cabin. I thought of all those who had been here before me and I asked myself if justice had not been seen to be done.
I smiled.
An eye for an eye.
I had done this. I had made this happen. Was I not now someone? Surely I was; surely I was something that so many others were incapable of being. I was Ernesto Cabrera Perez, a man capable of killing other men, a gifted man, a dangerous man. I was someone special.
I breathed deeply. For a moment I felt dizzy, a little sick. I raised my hands and looked at the blood that was drying on my skin. I could feel the tension it created, and when I clenched my fists I believed I could hear the blood cracking and splitting in the pores and wrinkles of my fingers. I turned them over. These were the hands that had lifted my mother when she could not walk by herself. These were the hands that had defended me against the railing fists of my father.
I was scared. I asked myself what was inside me that made it possible for me to do these things.
I looked into nothing – an abyss, a hollow – and when I closed my eyes I felt the dizziness and disorientation grow even worse. I opened my eyes and shuddered. Whatever was there I did not want to know.
I stood up, stripped off my clothes, and hurried through into the small adjoining bathroom to wash the blood from my hands.
I dressed in the man’s shirt and suit, put on his shoes, bundled my own clothes together and tied them in a ball. In the inside pocket of his jacket I found the car keys. In the other pocket I found a bankroll close on a thousand American dollars. I looked down once more, and as to serve no purpose other than adding insult to injury, I raised my right foot and stamped down hard on the man’s face.
I turned and walked to the cabin door. I glanced back one more time.
‘Sleep tight, Daddy,’ I whispered, and stepped out into the night.
I climbed into the car, started the engine, and drove out into the town, a town known only by those who lived there, a town that was none the wiser and would not be for some hours.
And those hours passed in a haze of alcohol-induced lust and heated passion. With the better part of a thousand dollars between us, Ruben Cienfuegos and I trawled the lower-life end of La Habana Vieja, and there we found girls who would do indescribable things for less than ten bucks Americano. We drank as if we had walked from the desert, and as morning ached its bruised and sallow way towards the horizon and color returned to the monochrome haunts of the darker underbelly of the city, we staggered half-blind and incoherent to our rooming house where I found my father sleeping the sleep of the dead. I remember stepping over him, hearing him slur and mumble unintelligibly, and I thought for a moment how easy it would have been to kneel across his chest, wrap my hands around his throat, and choke the last pathetic breath from his body as payment for what he had done to my mother. I stood over him for some time, the walls bending every which way they could, and I withheld myself. I believed it would have been too easy to kill him then, for the penance he had delivered to himself, of a broken-spirited man, a shell of whatever he once was, was far worse. I decided to let him suffer his own pains a while longer, and I crossed the room and lay down on my own mattress.
When I awoke it was late afternoon. I thought to call on Ruben and venture out once more into our hedonist’s paradise, but I stayed a while and spoke with my father. I gave him some money and told him to go out and get himself cleaned up, to buy some new clothes, to find some seventeen-year-old hooker and do his worst. He took my advice, once again pathetic and obsequious, and from the window of our room I watched him stumble away from the building towards the end of the street. I cleared my throat and spat after him. I turned my face in disgust. I could not bear to think that he had been the one to bring me into this world. I was better than him. I was Ernesto Cabrera Perez, son of my mother and of no-one else.
As the sun slipped beneath the skyline I left my room and walked down the stairwell to Ruben’s room. I knocked loudly, waited for a while, and then noticed that the door was not only unlocked but off its latch. I stepped inside. The lights were out, and where Ruben should have been, lying on his mattress, there was nothing but the sweat-stained tussle of sheets.
Perhaps he had come up to find me, and seeing me asleep had left. I knew where he would be. Down the block and across the junction was a narrow-fronted bar where he and I would meet when we became separated. I wandered down there, appreciating the feeling of freedom that so many dollars in my pocket produced, sufficient to fuel me through another week of such a lifestyle. Not a care in the world. Not a thought.
When I found no evidence of Ruben in the bar I became puzzled. I considered where he might have gone. I asked one or two of the older men if they had seen him.
‘He had many dollars,’ one of them said. ‘He was here some time ago, an hour, perhaps two, and then he left. He did not say where he was going. I didn’t ask. What you people do is non
e of my business.’
I left the bar and walked towards downtown. Perhaps he had gotten drunk and made his own way out to find some entertainment for the evening. I did not really care. Ruben could take care of himself. I thought to go back and get the car, the Mercury Cruiser I had driven from the motel the night before, and parade my way through the old city, pick up some girls, maybe drive out to the coast and make out on the beach. I decided against it. It was a conspicuous car, quite unlike any I had seen down here, and I did not wish to draw attention to myself.
For three hours I wandered through Old Havana. I paid a hooker to give me a blowjob in a back street but my body was so tired and replete with liquor I could not respond. I gave her money anyway, and she asked me to come visit her next time I was around. I said I would, but minutes after she had walked away I would have been unable to recognize her face. After a while they all started to look the same.
It was close to midnight when I turned back and headed home. I was angry, frustrated; irritated that Ruben had left without me, but in some way relieved. I needed to sleep. I felt poisoned with whiskey and cheap rum. I had eaten nothing since I’d woken and my body pained me greatly.
It took me the better part of an hour to reach the rooming house. The place was dark, my father had evidently not returned, and when I started up the stairs towards my room I thought to call in and check if Ruben had returned and was sleeping off his drunk.
The lights were out, the door was still open, and when I pushed it wide and stepped inside I knew that something was wrong.
The light that shone directly into my face blinded me. It was almost painful in its intensity, and before I had a chance to shout, to say something, there were hands on my shoulders. Terror, absolute breathless terror, grabbed me from behind and would not let me go. I was forced to my knees, and even as I opened my eyes once more a rough hessian bag was forced over my head and something was tied around my neck. My hands were tied, so tight I could feel the blood swelling at my wrists. My feet were behind me, and before I could move them or attempt to stand, I felt the pressure of something hard and unyielding against my forehead.
The click of the hammer was almost deafening.
The voice was unmistakably Italian.
‘You are Ernesto Perez?’ the voice asked.
I said nothing. I felt urine escape from my crotch and soak my pants. I could see the darkness that had faced me in the motel room. I could see whatever was inside me and it terrified me.
Somewhere to my left I heard a struggle. I heard a muffled voice, someone suppressing a howl of pain, and then there was silence for a heartbeat.
‘You are Ernesto Perez?’ the voice asked again.
I nodded once.
‘You killed a man in a motel last night,’ the voice stated matter-of-factly.
I didn’t move, didn’t say a word. I had lost all sensation in my hands. I could feel the veins in my neck swelling and pulsing.
‘You killed a very good friend of mine in a motel last night, and now we are going to repay his death.’
I felt the barrel of the gun stabbing at my forehead. I wanted to scream, wanted to lash out any which way I could, but with my hands tied, and the men behind me standing on my ankles, any movement was impossible.
‘Stand up,’ the voice said.
I was dragged roughly to my feet.
I could still sense the bright light shining directly towards my face even through the sacking over my head.
The light moved, back and to the left, and then with one swift motion the bag was snatched from over my face and I stood facing the man with the gun. That gun was now aimed squarely at my stomach.
I felt everything inside lurch upwards into my chest. It took every ounce of will I possessed to stop myself from screaming.
I looked to my left, and there, roped to a chair, gagged and bound like an animal waiting for slaughter, was Ruben Cienfuegos. He had been beaten within an inch of his life. His eyes were so swollen he could barely open them, his hair was matted with blood, his shirt had been torn from his shoulders and there were cigarette burns all over his skin.
I looked back at the man facing me, unquestionably an Italian. He was my father’s age, but his eyes were darker, and when he smiled and nodded there was something truly unnerving in his expression.
‘You know this man?’ he asked. He glanced towards Ruben.
I shook my head.
The man smiled and raised the gun. He aimed it directly between my eyes. I could almost hear the sound of his finger muscles tensing as he increased the pressure on the trigger.
‘You know this man?’
Once again I shook my head. I believed it would not have been possible for me to speak even had I wanted to. My throat was tight, as if a hand gripped it relentlessly, and as I tried to breathe I felt a fear so profound I believed it would stop my heart right where I stood.
The Italian shrugged. ‘Seems to me one of you is lying then,’ he said. ‘He says he knows you. He says your name is Ernesto Perez and you don’t deny it. How come he knows your name?’
I shook my head. I looked directly at the man, past the gun and straight into his eyes. ‘I-I do not know,’ I stuttered. I tried to sound certain. I tried to sound like a man speaking the truth. ‘He is a liar,’ I said.
Ruben Cienfuegos groaned painfully. He started to shake his head.
I tried to move my head, tried to look back over my shoulder. I was aware of two men standing behind me. I turned back to face the Italian once more. He had eyes like a shark, dead and without reflections. I knew that black, lightless expression would be the very last thing I saw.
I decided I would die. In that moment I decided that I would die, and if I did not die then this point would be a catharsis. If I survived this test then it would prove to me that all I had done was not wrong. This would be the confirmation of my life’s direction, and if not . . . well, if not, I would not have to concern myself with it any more.
I decided not to be afraid.
I thought of my mother, and the pride she would feel in my strength.
I decided that I would not be afraid, and if this man with the dead eyes killed me then I would find my mother and tell her that everything had not been in vain.
I would live, or I would see my mother again; that was my choice.
‘One of you is lying,’ the man said. ‘You admit your name is Ernesto Perez?’
‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘I am Ernesto Perez.’
‘And this one here?’ he asked, indicating Ruben with a sweep of the gun.
‘Is someone I have never seen before.’
Ruben groaned once more. I could feel his pain, but in feeling it I also began to feel nothing at all. Whatever capacity for sympathy I might have possessed had dissolved and vanished. I realized then that, in being confronted with my own death, the lives of everyone else around me became truly insignificant. This moment would be the exorcism of whatever shred of conscience and compassion I might still have owned.
‘So if this is someone you have never seen before it will mean nothing to you if he dies?’
I looked at the man. I did not flinch. Not a single muscle moved in my face. ‘Nothing at all,’ I said quietly, and then I smiled.
‘And of this man that was killed last night in the motel? This one here says that you were guilty of his murder, that he was not there and you were the one who killed him.’
I shook my head. ‘If he was not there then how does he know anything about it?’ I asked.
‘You are saying he is a liar?’
‘I am,’ I replied. I felt my heart slow. I felt my pulse in my neck. I felt the tension in my head and heart start to ease. I believed that I had never lied so well in my life.
‘And what does that say about you . . . you can stand there and let another man defame and slander your name? Let a man call you a murderer and you do nothing?’
I stared back at the Italian. ‘I will exact my vengeance at the appropriate time.�
��
The Italian laughed, threw his head back and laughed out loud. ‘Quando fai i piani per la vendetta,’ he said, and the two men behind me started laughing also.
‘You exact your vengeance now,’ he said, ‘or both of you die here in this room.’
I looked at Ruben, could see that he was straining to make eye contact with me out of the swollen wreck of his face.
‘You pay for the death of my friend and you clear your own name with this killing,’ the Italian said. ‘You prove yourself a man, my little Cuban friend, and you preserve your own life.’ He smiled once more. ‘We have a deal?’
‘We do,’ I said, and I glanced once more towards Ruben.
The Italian stepped back, lowered his gun, and moved to the side of the room. The two men behind me untied my hands and I stood there, my heart thundering in my chest, sweat running down my entire body, my hands shaking violently as the blood rushed back into them and gave them feeling once more.
The Italian nodded. One of the men behind me stepped forward and handed me a tire lever.
‘There are two hundred and six bones in the human body,’ the Italian said. ‘I want to hear you break every single one.’
Later, much later, seated on the floor in my own room, the Italian told me his name.
‘Giancarlo Ceriano,’ he stated, and he lit two cigarettes, one of which he passed to me. I looked at him then, looked at him for the first time without death staring back at me. He was dressed immaculately, everything about him precise and exact and tailored. His hands were manicured, his hair smooth, his every movement somehow graceful but in no way anything but masculine. Ceriano seemed like something feral, something between a man and an animal, and yet elegant and discerning and very intelligent.
‘I know you killed the man in the motel room,’ he went on. ‘Do not question how I know this, and do not deny it. You will offend me greatly if you lie to me now.’ He looked at me with his black deadlight eyes. ‘I am right, no?’
R. J. Ellory Page 20