Three Trapped Tigers

by G. Cabrera Infante

  Are you an analyst, doctor? That’s what it’s called, analyst, right? I’m asking you because I don’t see a couch or an easy chair by the wall or anything like that and I know you’re not a reflexologist. At least you don’t look at me like a Pavlovian. Ah, now you’re smiling! No, I mean it, doctor, I really mean it: you know, doctor, this time I’ve come to you of my own will.

  I HEARD HER SING

  Ah Fellove they were playing your “Mango Mangüé” on the radio and the music and the speed and the night enveloped us as though they wanted to protect us or vacuum-pack us and she was riding beside me, singing, humming that rhythmic melody of yours I think and she wasn’t she, I mean she wasn’t La Estrella but Magalena or Irenita or Mirtila I think she was and in any case she wasn’t she because I’m quite clear about the difference between a whale and a sardine or a gold fish and possibly it was Irenita because she really was a demoiselle kept in the fish tank of the night. Could her name be Gary Baldi? No, she looks damn selfish and in any case fishes’ teeth can be seen sticking out of a little mouth not the great whale’s maw of La Estrella which had room for a whole ocean of life, but: what the hell is one stripe more to a tiger? I picked this blond stripe up in Pigal when I was on my way to Las Vegas, late at night or early in the morning, and she was standing alone under the street light outside El Pigal and she shouted at me as I was slamming my brakes on, Stop your chariot, Ben Hurry, and I drew up to the curb and she said, Where you going pretty thing? and I said Las Vegas and she said couldn’t I take her a little further, where I said and she said, South of the border, Where? and she said, Across Esquina de Texas, Texas she said not Tejas corner and it was this that decided me to let her in, aside from the things I could see now that she was in the car and the street lights hit her enormous boobs bobbing up and down under her blouse, and I said, Is that for real, and she didn’t answer, just opened her shirt, because what she was wearing was a man’s shirt not a blouse and she unbuttoned it and she let her breasts, no: her tits, no: her udders hang loose: her enormous white round pointed boobs that were sometimes pink sometimes blue sometimes gray, and they began to look forever rosy under the lights of the streets we were passing and I didn’t know whether to look to the side or the front and then I started worrying that someone would see us, that the police would stop us, because although it was twelve o’clock or two in the morning there were people everywhere in the street and I crossed Infanta doing sixty and at the seafood stand there were people eating shellfish and there are eyes like flashlights, eyesight tracking at the speed of light and sights more accurate than Marey’s gun because I heard people shouting, Melons for the market! and I put my foot down on the accelerator and with my engine going at full throttle crossed Infanta and Carlos Tercero and suddenly the Esquina de Tejas disappeared behind Jesús del Monte and in Aguadulce I took the wrong turn and missed a number 10 bus by perhaps a couple of seconds and we arrived at El Sierra which was where this girl now very coolly buttoning up her shirt in front of the cabaret wanted to go and I say, O.K., Irenita and reach out a hand toward one of the melons which never made it to their market because they still had to be picked and be carried there, and she says to me, My name isn’t Irenita, it’s Raquelita, but don’t call me Raquelita, call me Manolito el Toro because that’s what my friends call me and that’s what I am, a bull! and she removed my hand and got out, I’m thinking of having myself rechristened. Legally I mean, she said and started crossing the street toward the entrance of the cabaret where there was this pinup of a beautiful chick waiting for her and they held each other’s hands and kissed on the mouth and began talking in whispers at the entrance under the neon sign which flashed on and off red and black and I could see them and I couldn’t and I could and I couldn’t and I could and I got fed up and up and out of the car and crossed the street and joined them and I said, Manolito and she didn’t let me finish my sentence but said, And this one you see here is my gal Joe, pointing to her friend who looked at me with a very solemn face, but I said, Delighted to meet you Joe and she smiled and I went on, Manolito, I said, I’ll make it a round trip for the same price and she said nothing doing and as I didn’t want to go back into the Sierra because I hadn’t the slightest desire to meet up with that mulatto Eribó or with El Beny the singer or with Cué who would begin with their music discussions which belong in the library, all of them talking at once about music as if it were the race question, arguing in unison that if two black keys are worth one white, and about mixed bars and all that, then jumping from black keys to black magic and voodoo and santería and then telling stories about ghosts not in haunted houses at midnight but in front of a radio announcer’s mike in the early morning or at midday in a rehearsal and they talk of that piano in Radioprogreso which has played by itself since Moisés Simons, the composer of “Peanut Vendor,” died and things like that which would keep me awake at night if I had to go to bed alone. So I turned around and went back to my car but not before I had said good-bye to Joe and Manolito, saying, naughty of me, Good-bye girls! and off I went almost at a run.

  I went to Las Vegas and arrived at the coffee stand and met up with Laserie and said to him, Hi, Rolando, how’re things and he said, How’re you, mulato and so we began chatting and then I told him I was going to take some pics of him here one of these nights when he was having a cup of coffee, because Rolando really looks good, a real singer, a real Cuban, a real regal habanero with his white drill suit, very neat and dandy from the white tan shoes to the white straw hat, dressed as only Negroes know how to dress, drinking his coffee very careful making sure not to spill a drop and stain his spotless suit, with his body tilted back and his mouth on the rim of the cup and the cup in one hand and the other hand under it resting on the bar drinking the coffee sip by sip, and I said good-bye to Rolando, See you soon, I said and he said, Whenever you feel up to it, mulato, and I’m just about to go into the club when you’ll never guess whom I see in the door. None other than Alex Bayer who comes up to me and shakes my hand and says, I’ve been expecting you, in that very fine very educated very polished accent of his and I say, Who, me, and he says, Yes, you, and I say, Do you want me to take some shots of you and he says, No, I want to talk with you, and I say, Whenever you want, but isn’t it a bit late now thinking he might or might not be trying to pick a fight, you never know with these people, like when José Mujica was in Havana he was walking along the Prado with an actress on each arm or a couple of singers or just two girls, and a fellow who was sitting on a bench shouted at them, Hi girls, and Mujica, very serious, very much the Mexican movie star, in pitch, as though he had been singing, went over to the bench and asked the fellow, ‘Xcuse me, what did you say and he said, What you heard, miss, and Mujica, who was a really big man (or is, if he’s still alive, though people tend to shrink as they get older) picked him up and held him over his head and threw him down on the street, not on the street but onto the grass borders between the Prado and the street, and went on his way as naturally and easily and unrivaled as though he were singing “Perfidia,” Mexican accent and all, and I don’t know if Alex was thinking what I was thinking or was thinking what Mujica was thinking or if he was thinking what he himself was thinking, all I know is that he laughed, he smiled and said, Let’s go and I said, Let’s sit at the bar and he shook his head, No, what I have to talk to you about it’s better that I say it outside and I said, Better still, let’s sit in my car then and he said, No, let’s take a walk and I said, All right and we went off down along P Street and as we were walking he said, Night is made for walking in Havana, isn’t it, and I nodded and then said, Yes, if it’s cool, Yes, he said, if it’s cool it’s nice for walking. I do it very often, it’s the best tonic there is for body and soul, and I felt like shitting on his soul thinking that all this faggot wanted to do was to walk around with me and pretend he was a philosopher. Peripathetic.

  As we were walking along we saw the Cripple with the Gardenias coming out of the dark opposite, with his crutch and his tray of
gardenias and his good evening said so politely and with such courtesy it seemed almost impossible he could be so sincere and crossing another street I heard the harsh, nasal and relentless voice of Juan Charrasqueado the Sing-Singing Charro singing the single verse of the lottery which he always sings and repeats a thousand times, Buy your number and buy your number and buy your number and buy your number and buy, meaning they should throw money into his sweaty sombrero as he forcibly passed it around, creating an atmosphere of mock obsession which is poignant because everyone knows he’s incurably mad. I read the sign above the Restaurant Humboldt Club and thought of La Estrella who always ate there and I wondered what the illustrious baron who had discovered Cuba would say if he knew he is best remembered here as the name of a cheap restaurant, a dingy bar and a street famous for an infamous political massacre and also for a notorious brothel specializing in living pictures, featuring Superman! and Fernando’s Hideaway and Bar San Juan and Club Tikoa and The Fox and the Crow and the Eden Rock where one night a black woman made the mistake of going down the flight of stairs to the door, in there to eat, and they threw her out with an excuse that was an exclusion and she began to shout LitelrocLitelrocLitelroc because Faubus was in the news and she started a great uproar down there, and La Gruta where all the eyes are phosphorescent because the creatures who inhabit this bar and club and bedroom are fish from the lower depths and Pigalle or Pigale or Pigal, it’s called all these ways, and the Wakamba Self-Service and Marakas with its menu in English and its bilingual menu outside and its neon Chinese sign to confuse Confucius, and the Cibeles and the Colmao and the Hotel Flamingo and the Flamingo Club and on passing down N Street and 25th I saw under the lamppost outside in the street four old men playing dominoes in shirtsleeves and I smiled and even laughed and Alex asks me what I’m laughing about and I say, Oh nothing and he says I know he says. Do you? I asked and he says yes he says, At the poetry of this group portrait and I think, Fuck, an aesthete. But what I tell him is that he hasn’t told me what he wanted to tell me and he says he doesn’t know how to begin and I say that’s very easy, begin at the beginning or at the end and he says, Easy for you because you’re a journalist and I say, I’m not a journalist, I’m a photographer, Albeit a press photographer, he says and I say, Hélas yes I am and he says, Well, I’ll begin in the middle and I say, Fine and he says, I take it you don’t really know La Estrella and you go about telling lies about her and about us. Never mind that, I know what the truth is and I’m going to tell you, and I am not offended or anything and I see that he isn’t offended or anything, so I say, Fine, shoot.

  Second session

  There were three bathhouses, one next to the other, and I went into the last one, which had an open terrace, with a wooden floor and against one of the walls there were a number of easy chairs with people sitting in them taking in the fresh air and talking and sleeping. I asked for someone, I don’t remember who, and they told me to look for him on the beach. I climbed up to the path, where the sun was really hot. The road was dazzling white and the grass looked burnt. The beach was way back to the left and I continued walking and came to a quiet beach; where the waves rolled all the way in and returned to the sea and came in again very gently. There was a dog playing on the beach, but then I think he stopped playing, because he was running the whole length of the shore and he dipped his mouth in the water and I saw that smoke was coming out of it. Not out of the sea but out of the dog: smoke was coming out of his muzzle and his ribs and his tail looked like a torch. Now there was a very poor wooden house to the right and the sky which until a moment ago had been that of a mild winter’s day was gray now and there was one cloud, only one but very large, very swollen and very white, and there was a wind and I can’t remember whether or not it was raining. I saw two more dogs running toward the first one, with smoke coming out of them, and they also plunged into the sea. I think they disappeared. When I reached the corner of the house, the other corner, the one that was farthest away, I saw two or three dogs trotting around and around a bonfire and dipping their muzzles in it and trying to get something out of the fire. One after another they burned themselves and they ran toward the sea which was now much farther off. I came closer and saw that there was another dog in the fire, right in it, burnt up, an enormous dog, in the middle of the fire with his paws sticking up, all swollen, and some parts of him, the paws, were charred and he had no tail or ears, they must have turned to ashes.

  I stood there gazing at the dog watching him slowly burn and I think that I decided to go into the house, through the door which led to the square where they were burning the dog (because there was a square and the dog had been burned on a pile of sand), to let anybody who was there know. I knocked and nobody answered and then I pushed the door open. Inside, staring at the door, was another dog, an enormous one, almost the size of a calf, his face covered with hair and his ears pointed and a filthy gray color. He was really scary! I think his eyes were red or perhaps they were blazing because the room or house was very dark. When I opened the door he got up and snarled and leaped at me. I was on the verge of screaming when I realized he had passed to one side of me and had pushed the door open with his body. I saw him run toward the monument where the other dog was burning and without showing a scrap of fear he plunged into the flames and ate the burnt dog. I remember him standing there with a piece of scorched meat in his mouth. He went on eating the dog and picking him up in his muzzle and the dog that had been burnt was almost as big as he was and I say almost because the other dog was missing those parts of him that had been lost in the fire. The live dog lifted the dead dog above the fire, carried him without any difficulty and returned with him to the house, without any part of the burnt dog touching the ground. They must have gone past me, because I hadn’t moved from the door, but I didn’t even hear them going by.

  I HEARD HER SING

  You are being so unfair! Alex said and I was about to protest when he said, No, let me speak and afterward you’ll know that you really are being unfair, and I let him talk, I let him go on talking in that voice which was so rounded, so beautiful, so well-manicured, which pronounced all the s’s and all the d’s and in which all the r’s were r’s and I began to understand as he was talking just why he was so famous as an actor on the radio and why he got thousands of letters from women every week and I understood why he rejected their proposals and I also understood why he took such pleasure in making conversation, in telling stories, in talking: he was a Narcissus-cum-Echo who let his & her words fall into the pool of conversation and then listened to himself rapturously in the ripples of sound she made. Was it his voice that made him a faggot? Or the reverse? Or is it that in every actor there’s an actress struggling to get out? Oh, well, asking questions is not my line.

  What you are saying is not exactly true, he said. We, he said (and that we was all he conceded on his beautiful arrangement), we are not Estrella’s masters, La Estrella as you call her. In actual fact we are more like Polyphemus’s sheep. (A beauty, ain’t it? But you’d have to hear him say it to get the full flavor.) She does what she likes in our house. She’s not a servant or anything like that, but an uninvited guest: she arrived one day six months ago because we invited her one night when we heard her sing in the Bar Celeste: I invited her but just to have a drink with us. She overstayed, then she stayed over to sleep and she slept all day and when night fell she went away without saying a word. But the following morning she was knocking at the door. She went directly upstairs and lay down in the room we had given her the night before, my painting studio which, incidentally, I traded with her for the servant’s room on the roof after she gave notice to our servant, who, poor soul, had been with us for years and years, taking advantage of the fact that we were away on holiday. Instead, she brought a cook into the house, a little Negro boy who obeyed her in everything and whom she went out with every night. Do you see what I mean? He used to carry her neceser for her, which at that time might be an old commando handbag or even a shoppin
g bag with the label of El Encanto store still on. Then they would do the town at night and return in the wee hours of the morn. That was until we dismissed him. This happened, of course, much later. A week after that night she spent here as our guest she told us the story of her invalid son and taking advantage of the fact that we felt sorry for her—only for half a mo’, let me tell you she asked us if we could take her into our house, though as it was she could hardly ask us to allow her to stay, as she had already been staying with us a week. We took her in, as she called it, and after a few days she asked us if she could borrow a key. “So as not to disturb you,” she told us. She gave it back the following day, it’s true, but she didn’t disturb us anymore, because she didn’t knock on the door anymore. You know why? Because she had surreptitiously had another key made, her own of course.