Mona and Other Tales (Vintage International Original)

by Reinaldo Arenas

  “The worst thing of all is that for all his pretensions and ridiculous posturing as a brilliant author, he has no talent whatsoever and can’t even write without making spelling mistakes. He often misspells my first family name and writes it without the t,” concluded Delfín Prats Pupo, so as not to leave any doubt on the matter.

  And everyone laughed, again producing a strange sound like the tinkling of wineglasses.

  Increasingly nervous, Alfredo lit another cigarette, which he quickly dropped on the floor when Delfín Prats Pupo, mimicking his every gesture, began to light one too.

  “Sir, would you please pick up that butt?” one of the nearest servants reprimanded him. “Or are you trying to burn the carpet?”

  Alfredo bent down to do as he was told, and, while in that position, verified that the peculiar tinkling sound was produced by the tittering voices of the guests as they whispered, glancing at him with contempt. He brusquely extricated himself from the Saint Bernard’s legs, as the dog howled pitifully, and approached the guests to try to figure out what was going on. But as soon as he joined the group, the governor’s assistant, without looking at him, announced her immediate departure.

  Suddenly, as if propelled by a spring, the guests decided that it was time to leave. The countess was carried away in her imposing chair, while most of the guests kissed her hand, which was now transparent (at least to Alfredo). The famous opera singer was also leaving, on the (truly transparent) arm of the bank president. The minister turned to go while keeping up a lively conversation with the pianist, whose face was becoming more and more shiny and brilliant. When the award-winning lady poet left with Daniel Fernández Trujillo’s arm around her waist, Alfredo saw the young man’s hand sink effortlessly into her translucent body (although Daniel Fernández Trujillo’s hand soon became invisible as well, and both figures fused into one). The black musicians were also leaving, led by Delfín Prats Pupo, who jumped around among them cheerfully, producing the familiar tinkling sound, while mimicking the gestures of the writer, who could do nothing to stop him. Olga Neshein de Leviant left with a mathematics professor, their hands entwined. In the midst of this stampede, Berta González del Valle stuffed her handbag with French cheeses, and Nicolás Landrove Felipe carted away the candy, both of them oblivious to Alfredo’s signals and the protests of the hostess, Gladys Pérez Campo, who, on her way out in the company of her Chihuahuas, threatened to call the police. But her voice faded away into an imperceptible tinkling.

  Within a few minutes, the hostess, the guests, and even the hired staff had disappeared, along with the characters of the story, and Alfredo found himself alone in the huge mansion. Disconcerted, he was getting ready to leave when the thunder of trucks and cranes reverberated through the building.

  Suddenly the foundations of the house began to move and the roof disappeared; the carpets rolled up automatically; the windowpanes, freed from their casements, flew through the air; the doors left their frames; the paintings came off the walls; and the walls, moving at an unbelievable speed, vanished along with everything else, into a huge truck. As everything disassembled and packed itself (the whole garden with its plastic trees, walls, and air fresheners was already moving out), Alfredo saw that the mansion had been nothing more than an enormous prefabricated cardboard set that could be installed and dismantled quickly, and which one could rent for a few days or even a few hours, according to the ad on the side of the large truck in which everything was being carted away.

  In a flash, the site where the imposing mansion had stood became nothing but a dusty embankment. Standing in the center, still perplexed, Alfredo could not find (it no longer existed) the path that would take him back to the city. He walked around aimlessly, thinking about the story he had never written. But an enthusiastic bark pulled him out of his meditation.

  Exasperated, Alfredo began running, but the Saint Bernard, evidently more athletic than the writer, caught up with him quickly, knocked him down, and began licking his face. An unexpected joy came over Alfredo when he realized that her tongue was indeed real. He pulled himself together and got up. Caressing Narcisa—who followed him faithfully—he abandoned the site.

  Miami Beach, April 1986

  With My Eyes Closed

  I’M ONLY GOING to tell the whole story to you because I know that if I tell it to you, you’re not going to laugh in my face and you’re not going to scold me either. I can’t tell my mother. I can’t tell Mother anything, ’cause if I did, she would never stop nagging and scolding me. And, even though she would probably be right, I really don’t want to hear any kind of warning or advice.

  So that’s why. Because I know you’re not going to say anything to me, I’m telling you all.

  Since I’m only eight, I go to school every day. And that is when all my troubles start, ’cause I have to get up pretty early—when the bantam rooster my grandaunt Angela gave me has only crowed twice. My school is pretty far.

  About six in the morning my mother begins scolding me for not getting up, and by seven I’m already sitting on the bed and rubbing my eyes. Then I have to do everything in a hurry: get dressed fast, run fast to school, and get in line fast because the bell rang already and the teacher is standing by the door.

  But yesterday was different. My grandaunt Angela had to leave for Oriente and catch a train before seven. And there was a tremendous racket around the house. All the neighbors came to say good-bye, and my mother got so nervous that she dropped the pot of boiling water for making coffee on the floor, and burned her foot.

  With all that unbearable noise, I couldn’t sleep any more. And since I was already awake, I decided to get up.

  Grandaunt Angela, after a lot of hugs and kisses, finally managed to go. And I left right away for school, even though it was still pretty early.

  Today I don’t have to rush, I told myself, almost smiling. In fact, I began walking pretty slowly. And when I was going to cross the street, I stumbled over a cat lying on the curb. “What a place you picked to sleep,” I told him, and I nudged him with the tip of my shoe. But he didn’t move. Then I bent down closer and realized he was dead. Poor thing, I thought, he was probably run over by a car and someone dragged him over to the curbside so he wouldn’t get totally squashed. What a shame. He was a big yellow cat who surely did not want to die. Anyway, it’s too late now. And I kept on walking.

  As it was still early, I stopped by the pastry shop. It’s far from school, but it always has freshly baked, delicious pastries. There are two old ladies always standing by the door of the shop, each one carrying a shopping bag and asking for charity, hand extended. One day I gave each lady a nickel, and they both said at the same time, “May God bless your soul.” That really made me laugh, so I grabbed two more nickels to put in their awfully wrinkled, freckly hands. Again they said together, “May God bless your soul,” but by that time I didn’t feel like laughing anymore. And since then, every time I walk by, these wrinkled black women give me a knowing look, and I can’t help but give each one a nickel. Except yesterday: I really couldn’t give them anything ’cause I had already spent the whole quarter I have for my afternoon snack on chocolate cookies. I had to leave through the back door so they wouldn’t see me.

  I only needed then to get across the bridge and walk two more blocks to school.

  I stopped at the bridge for a moment because I heard a lot of noise below by the river’s edge. I leaned as far as possible over the railing in order to be able to see. A group of boys of all ages had trapped a water rat in a corner and were throwing rocks and hollering at it. The rat was running from one side of the corner to the other and squealing sharply in desperation: it had no escape. Finally one of the boys took a bamboo pole and hit it on the back with all his might, squashing it. After the others ran to it, jumping up and down with the joy of victory, one of them picked up the body and hurled it into the middle of the river. The dead rat did not sink. It floated on its back for a while until it disappeared under the current.

&n
bsp; The boys kept on shouting and moved to another part of the river. I started walking also.

  Gosh, I told myself, it’s so easy to walk over the bridge. I can even do it with my eyes closed. There is a railing to prevent you from falling in the water on one side and, on the other, the edge of the curb warns you not to step on the road. And to prove it, I closed my eyes and kept walking. At first I held on to the bridge railing with one hand, but after a while I didn’t need to. And I kept walking with my eyes closed. And don’t you go and tell it to my mother, but with your eyes closed there are many things you can see, even better than when you keep them open. The first thing I saw was a big yellowish cloud that sometimes shone more brightly than others, just like the sun when it’s filtering through the trees. Then I closed my eyes really tight and the reddish cloud turned blue. And not only blue, but green. Green, then purple. Bright purple, like a rainbow that comes out after it has rained a lot and the earth is almost drowning.

  And, with my eyes closed, I began thinking about the streets and about other things, and I kept on walking without stopping. And I saw my grandaunt Angela as she was leaving the house. Except she wasn’t in the red polka-dot dress that she always wears when she goes to Oriente but in a long, white dress. And being so tall, she was like a telephone pole wrapped in a bedsheet. But she looked fine.

  And I kept walking. I stumbled again over the cat on the curb. But this time, when I touched him with the tip of my shoe, he jumped up and ran away. The bright yellow cat ran away because he was alive and got scared when I woke him up. And I laughed a lot when I saw him vanish like a tornado, his back arched, his hair bristling with electricity.

  I kept walking, with my eyes closed tight, of course. And that’s how I got back to the pastry shop. Since I couldn’t buy any pastries for myself because I had already spent all my food money, I could only look at the ones in the shop window. And I was just doing that, looking at them, when I heard two voices behind the counter asking me, “Wouldn’t you like one of these?” And when I looked up, I saw that the two old ladies who were always begging at the shop entrance now seemed to be working there. I didn’t know what to say. But their guess was exactly right, and full of smiles they picked up a large, reddish chocolate-almond cake. And they gave it to me.

  I went crazy with joy and walked away with my huge cake.

  While crossing the bridge, carrying the cake in my hands, I again heard the ruckus of the noisy boys. And (with my eyes closed) I leaned over the bridge railing and saw them down below, swimming fast toward the middle of the river in order to rescue a water rat. The poor thing looked sick and couldn’t swim.

  The boys took the trembling rat out of the water and put it on top of a rock on the sandy shore so it could get dry in the sun. Then I was just about to call all of them over to join me and share the chocolate cake, because it was so big that I wouldn’t be able to eat it all by myself.

  I swear I was going to call them. And I lifted the cake up high for them to see, so that they would believe what I was about to tell them and come running. But then, pow!, a truck almost ran over me in the middle of the street, which is where, without realizing it, I had been standing.

  So here I am: my legs are all white because of the casts and the bandages. As white as the walls in this room, with only women dressed in white coming in to give me an injection or a pill, also white.

  And don’t you think that what I told you is made up. And don’t you think, just because I have a bit of a fever and every once in a while I complain about the pain in my legs, that I am lying to you, because it’s not so. And if you want to see if what I told you is true, you only need to go to the bridge and you’ll probably find, all over the asphalt, the big, reddish chocolate-almond cake that the two old ladies at the pastry shop gave me with a smile.

  1964

  The Great Force

  WHEN THE GREAT FORCE CREATED everything that is, she did also create the human race. But the moment she got an inkling of her creatures’ behavior—this required only a few hours—she ascended in terror back to the heavens, fearing for her own existence. Once reinstalled at the zenith, she proceeded with her diverse creations, including her masterpiece or, at least, what she considered to be her masterpiece. A perfect being that would reflect her and honor her: a son. In a state of powerful plenitude, the Great Force shared a few years with her closest kin, and almost forgot the lowly ones, or terrestrials, as humans were referred to in her court, and the remote place they inhabited. She could not, however, keep her son from finding out about her flawed creation, much less prevent (given the nature of children) his harboring the wish to descend for a visit, and even to converse with the denizens of the abominable region. The stronger and more irrefutable were the Great Force’s arguments about the evil nature of the lowly ones, the greater was the son’s interest in getting to know them and attempting to reform their ways. In addition to this, there were the incentives applied by the closest friends of the Great Force to encourage the son (and let’s not talk about her enemies, who pictured the planet as paradise itself). It was then quite understandable that within a few months the son finally made his descent to Earth. After a lengthy journey through numerous galaxies, the son arrived at the long-anticipated location, where what he saw was a teeming anthill voraciously feeding on itself. Naturally, said the son (who always knew the appropriate answers to everything), they are trying to find themselves, and not succeeding. I will show them who they are, so that instead of destroying one another, they will be filled with brotherly love. . . . Once on Earth, without much ado the son commenced his teachings about self-knowledge and brotherly love, which unleashed an even greater violence and hatred than those beings had ever experienced. The conservatives considered such teachings an insult to established morality; the liberals attacked the son as reactionary, for not practicing violence. The powerful feared their position was being threatened, and the poor imagined that the whole issue was nothing but a ruse devised to enhance even further their thralldom to the powerful. As for the envious ones, which amounted to nearly the whole population, they flatly rejected him outright, simply because they could not tolerate having anyone outshine them. And so it happened that as soon as the son was able to realize his predicament and cry out for his progenitor’s help, he was quickly torn to pieces. But the Great Force (as any force would do) revived her son, and in his rescue made him soar at lightning speed through the heavens. The commotion this produced on Earth was felt unanimously. Executioners and their accomplices, that is, the whole human race, fell to their knees and began worshiping the disappearing figure. Since that moment they trustfully await, amid crass injustices and flagellations, the one who will bring them redemption. But now the son is far from being the slender, long-haired youth who in order to assert himself had to disobey his parent. As owner of a gigantic nebula, he raises phosphorescent asteroids; he has lost most of his hair, and has numerous, beautiful offspring (the pride and joy of the Great Force, somewhat mellowed over the years) who are forbidden to learn about astronomy. Besides, the son no longer remembers where the earth is located, and does not even remotely intend to pay it a visit.

  “That is what the foolish narrator of this story believes. I am actually watching closely for the slightest opportunity to escape this realm and make my second descent.”

  New York, 1987

  Mona

  To Delfín Prats, my loyal reader during the seventies

  I am fully conscious that not being a man. . . .

  LEONARDO DA VINCI

  Notebooks

  Foreword by Daniel Sakuntala

  A PECULIAR BIT OF NEWS APPEARED in the international press in October of 1986. Ramón Fernández, twenty-seven, who had come to the United States in the Mariel exodus from Cuba, was arrested at the Metropolitan Museum of Art as he “attempted to knife” the Mona Lisa, Leonardo da Vinci’s famous painting, valued at a hundred million dollars.

  Most of the newspaper reports offered basic information on the art
ist and his masterpiece, then speculated that Mr. Fernández was one of the many mental patients who were expelled from Cuba in the 1980 Mariel boatlift. The museum’s exhibit of the famous painting would be extended until the fifteenth of November 1986, by special permission from the Louvre. That was all they said, and whether it was for reasons of diplomacy or out of ignorance they omitted a minor detail: Mitterrand’s French government would pocket five million dollars for the “courtesy” of having allowed the Mona Lisa to cross the Atlantic. It is interesting to note that the press— especially that in the United States—emphasized the fact that the suspect, a presumed mental case, was a marielito. Also of interest is the media’s reference to an attempt to knife the painting, when according to all the evidence, including the suspect’s confession, the assault weapon was a hammer. . . . A few days later, on October 17, the New York Times, deep in one of its back pages, printed a brief account of the strange death of the detainee Ramón Fernández: “The young man from Cuba who attempted to destroy Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece was found strangled in his prison cell this morning. He had been waiting to make his first court appearance. Oddly,” the reporter added, “the suicide weapon is still a mystery.” Aware of the detainee’s mental condition, the authorities had deprived him of his belt and shoelaces. The prisoner seemed to have strangled himself with his bare hands. No one from the outside had visited Mr. Fernández, who, according to the warden, had spent his six days of incarceration in a highly agitated state, writing what appeared to be a long letter—which he subsequently mailed to one of his Cuban friends in exile. The warden declared that because this was a special case, he had taken the precaution of reading this document (obtained through a policeman who had pretended to befriend Mr. Fernández), and it confirmed the inmate’s state of extreme mental disturbance. After photocopying the letter, he had it mailed to its addressee, “since it added nothing (sic) to the evidence.” Two days later, while the front pages gave coverage to Mother Teresa’s suicide, only a few newspapers reported that Ramón Fernández’s body had mysteriously disappeared from the morgue, where it was awaiting the arrival of the forensic physician and the district attorney. Thus ends the more or less hard news regarding the case, news that began with a confused bit of information (the so-called knifing of the Mona Lisa) and ended similarly (with the apparent suicide of the suspect). In the confident wisdom so characteristic of ignorance, the yellow press sniffed a crime of passion behind all this. . . . Needless to say, a flock of magazines and New York tabloids—those called liberal because they are ready to defend any enemy empire against the American empire—headed by the Village Voice, reported the events differently: Ramón Fernández was an anti-Castro Cuban terrorist who, in clear opposition to the socialist French government, had attempted to destroy that country’s most treasured work of art. And as if this were not enough to grant us Cubans the status of troglodytes, a libelous Hispanic rag published in New Jersey and funded by a Cuban extremist, Luis P. Suardíaz, wrote a blazing editorial in praise of Fernández’s “patriotic deed,” saying that his “action” had served to draw the French government’s attention to the case of Roberto Bofill, a Cuban who had gained political asylum in the French embassy in Havana and had repeatedly been denied an exit permit by Fidel Castro.