—A very nice name, she said. I didn’t pursue the matter.
Arsenio Cué must have been listening all the time because he freed himself from one of those eight arms of his fiancée who looked like a squid with bones and said:
—Pourquoi ne to maries tu?
Vivian laughed, but it was an automatic laugh, a loud smile from a TV commercial, a mocking grimace.
—Arsen, his fiancée said.
I looked at Arsenio Cué who was insisting.
—Mais oui. Pourquoi non?
Vivian stopped smiling. Arsenio was drunk and went on using not only his voice but his index finger now. So much so that Silvestre left off looking at the show, though only for a moment.
—Arsen, his fiancée said crossly.
—Pourquoi, alors?
He was pissed off. There was a persistent note of annoyance in his voice as though I’d been talking to his fiancée and not to Vivian.
—Arson, she was shouting now. Fiancée not Vivian.
—It’s pronounced Arsen, I told her.
She looked at me, her blue eyes blazing with fury, unloading all the irritation she felt with Cué on me.
—Ça alors, she said to me. —Chéri, viens. Viens! Embrassez-moi. This was addressed to Arsenio Cué, presumably.
—Oh, dear, Cué said in English and he forgot us all as he buried himself in those bilingual or trilingual collarbones and ulnas.
—What’s the matter with them? I asked. I asked Vivian. She looked at them and told me:
—Apparently they want to turn Spanish into a dead language.
We both laughed. I was feeling good and now it wasn’t just because of her voice. Silvestre turned away from the show again, looked at us very seriously and went back to watching the train of bosoms-cum-limbs which was dollying the conga along a fanciful railroad of music and color and scandal. The number was called “The loco motive of love” and it was set to the tune of “The sea legs.”
—”Let’s go to the waterfront, let’s get back our sea legs,” Vivian sang pointedly, touching Cué’s fiancée on the arm.
—Qu’est-ce que c’est?
—Quit French-kissing and come with me, she said.
—Where to? said Cué’s fiancée.
—Yes, where? said Cué.
—To the ladies’, chéris. Vulgo, Jane, Vivian said.
—Wanna wo weewee, Cué said. They got up and as soon as they had left Silvestre turned his attentive shoulders to the show, beating the table with his hand and almost shouting:
—She’s bedable.
—What! I said.
—She’s an easy lay, Silvestre said.
—Who? Cué said.
—Not your girl, the other one, Vivian. She’s a bedable lay.
—Ah! I thought that’s who you meant, Cué said and I had never suspected him to be a puritan, but he quickly added, —Because if you meant Sibila (that was the name of Arsenio Cué’s fiancée or whatever she was: I’d been trying to remember it all evening) you’ve got it the wrong way right around, he said, smiling. —I mean you stand correct. She’ll go to bed, but with Myselftov, he said, meaning himself, Cué.
—No, Sibila, no, Silvestre said.
—Sí, Nobila, sí, said Cué.
They were both pissed.
—I say that she will go to bed, Silvestre said for the third time.
—Every night and in her own bedroom, said Cué, lisping out the words.
—Not go to bed to, I mean go to bed with, you fucker!
I thought it bedder to come between them.
—O.K., O.K., Charlie, she’ll go to bed and then she’ll go to bed. But we’d better pretend we’re watching the show or they’ll shove us out.
—Show us out, you mean, Silvestre said.
—Shove or show, it’s all the shame, Cué said.
—No, it’s not the same, said I.
—It’s not the same, it’s a shame, said Silvestre.
—They’ll show us out, Cué said, —but you’re the one they’ll shove out.
—It’s true, Silvestre said. —It’s true!
—It’s true it’s true, said Cué and he burst into tears. Silvestre tried to calm him down, but at that very moment Ana Coluton came onto the stage to do her number and he had no intention of missing that exhibition of legs and tits and woman’s wit that was capable of suggesting almost everything. The show was just coming to tit’s end when Vivian and Sibila returned and Cué was bent over the table and crying copiously.
—What’s the matter with him? Vivian asked.
—Qu’est qu’il y a chéri? said Sibila, fluttering over her tearful fiancé. But it was Silvestre who answered:
—He (meaning me) is afraid they will throw him (meaning Cué) out. Or voice versa.
—Yes, if he goes on making these scenes, Vivian said and Silvestre shouted over her, —Obscenes, I call them. They’ll throw us all out (and he drew an excentric circle with his drunken finger as he was speaking) and as for this fellow (and he directed an erratic arrow with his index finger toward me) they’ll fire him, poor fellow, and Silvestre burst into tears too.
Vivian tut-tut-tutted in false chagrin and true amusement and Silvestre gave her a hard look and almost lifted the hand with which he had insisted on Vivian’s erotic willingness, but he returned to watching one of the chorus girls pass by en route to the street and the oblivion of the night. Cué cried even louder. When I went back to the band Sibila who was also drunk joined him in his tear-letting and I left the tragicomic scene just as their table floated out into a sea of tears (courtesy of Arsenio Cué & Co.). I arrived on the stage just as they were lowering it into a dance floor.
When I start playing I forget everything else. So there I was beating, scraping, rubbing and swooping and plunging and smashing those drums, crossing, counterpointing them, unisoning them, coming in with the bass fiddle and the piano so I could hardly make out the table of my tearful and timorous and laughing friends, because it was in the dark at the back of the room. I went on playing when all at once I saw that Arsenio Cué was dancing on the floor, no longer crying, with Vivian as amused as ever. I had no idea that she danced so well, so much in swing, just like a Cuban. Cué for his part was being led by her as he smoked a king-size cigarette at the end of a black metallic holder and through his dark glasses he was confronting the world, petulant, pedantic and pathetic. They passed close to me and Vivian smiled at me.
—I like the way you play, tú, she said, and the tú was like a second smile on top of the first.
They swayed by me a number of times and ended up dancing in my territory. Cué was helplessly drunk and he had taken off his glasses now and was winking at me out of one eye and smiling and then he winked with both eyes, and, I think, he was saying to me, saying in lipspeak, She’s bedable, she’s bedable. Finally the number came to an end. It was that raveling bolero, “Mienteme.” Vivian left the floor first and Cué came up to me and said quite plainly in my ear: —That one really is bedable, and he laughed and pointed at Silvestre, who was slumped over the table, fast asleep, his small Oriental fat body fallen flat like a corpse shrouded in silk: blue against the white tablecloth, his suit looked expensive even from a distance. In the next number Arsenio Cué danced (more or less) with Sibila, who was also drunk and falling all over the place, so that he now seemed by contrast to be dancing better or less badly than before. While I was playing the bongos I noticed that she (Vivian) hadn’t taken her eyes off me. I saw her get up. I saw her cross the room and stand near the band.
—I had no idea you played so well, she said when the dance was over.
—Neither good nor bad, I said. —Just well enough to make a living.
—No, you really play well. I like it.
She didn’t say whether it was the fact that I was playing that she liked or that I played well or that it was me who was playing well. Would she be a music fan? Or a fiend for perfection? Had I given any indication or sign that betrayed my feelings?
&nbs
p; —I mean it seriously, she said. —I would like to play like you.
—You don’t have to.
She shook her head. Was she friend or fiend? I would soon know.
—Girls who belong in the Yacht Club don’t have to play the bongo drums.
—I don’t belong in the Yacht Club, she said and left and I didn’t know if she had been hurt or hurt herself. Because I went on playing.
I played and played and I saw Arsenio Cué call the waiter and ask for the check and I went on and on and on and I saw him wake up Silvestre and playing I saw the swarthy, skinflint writer get up and begin to go out with Vivian and Sibila supporting his arms and I went on playing as Cué was paying all that money by himself and playing the waiter came back and Cué gave him a tip which must have been a good one judging by the waiter’s satisfied face playing and I saw him go away as well and all of them meet up at the door and the doorman opening the crimson curtains and playing they crossed the classy well-lighted gambling saloon and the curtain closed on, behind them playing. They didn’t even say so much as bye-bye. But I didn’t care because I was playing and I went on playing and I continued to go on playing for a good while longer.
IV
I saw very little of Vivian before that night at the Sierra, but I saw plenty of Arsenio Cué and my friend Silvestre. I don’t know why I saw them but I did. One day I was coming out of a rehearsal (I think it was a Saturday afternoon) and I ran into Cué who was walking by himself, on foot surprisingly, along 21st Street. It was very hot that day and although the clouds had piled up toward the south it didn’t look as though it was going to rain, but Cué was wearing a raincoat (an imper, he called it) and he was holding his cigarette holder and smoking and walking along with that knock-kneed awkward stride of his and puffing the smoke out through his nostrils, both of them, like a double column of gray fumes floating ostentatiously out above his lips. He reminded me of the reluctant dragon. Not so much reluctant as a reticent dragon behind his sempiternal dark glasses and well-pruned mustache.
—This tropical heat is intolerable, he said by way of greeting me.
—You must be drowning, I said, pointing at his trench coat.
—Coat or no coat, clothes or no clothes, I don’t know how the hell anybody can stand this climate.
This was his theme song. It was on this note that he began his sound tracts against the tropics, the country, the people, the music, the Negroes, women and underdevelopment. Everything. It was his Third World Man’s Theme. That afternoon he told me that Cuba (not Venegas, the other Cuba) was not a fit hangout for man or beast. Nobody should live here except plants, insects and fungi or any other lower forms of life. The squalid fauna that Christopher Columbus found when he landed proved the point. All that remained now were birds and fish and tourists. All of these could leave the island when they wanted. On finishing his diatribe he asked me without changing his tone of voice:
—Do you want to come with me to the Focsa?
—What is to be done? I smiled.
—Nothing. Just to take a stroll around the swimming pool.
I didn’t know whether to go. I was tired and my fingers were hurting through the Band-Aid and it was hot. It doesn’t make you any cooler going dressed to a swimming pool and stopping on the edge, taking care not to get your clothes wet, just to gaze at the swimmers as if they were fish in a fish tank. I had no wish to go even if the fish were mermaids. I shook my head no.
—Vivian will be there, he said.
The swimming pool in the Focsa building was full, mostly with children. We saw Vivian waving at us from the water. All that could be seen of her was her head without a bathing cap, her hair sticking to her skull, face and neck. She looked like a little girl. But when she got out she wasn’t a little girl. She was quite sunburned and there was a taut shine to her shoulders and legs which was very different from the milky white under her black dress the night I met her. Her hair was much more blond also. She asked me for a cigarette and spoke forget-and-forgivingly, letting the bygones be washed away in the alcohol of the night.
—I skindive here every day, morning, afternoon and evening, wet-nursing really, she said, pointing to the pool, which had more kids than water. When I offered her a light she took my hand and lifted it to her cigarette. She had a long fine-boned hand now wrinkled by the water. It was a hand I liked and I liked it still more for holding my hand while she was lighting her cigarette and that she brought it very close to her thick well-formed lips.
—Too windy, she said. Was she talking about my style?
Cué had gone over to the other side of the pool and was talking with a group of young girls who had recognized him. Were they asking him for his autograph? They were all sitting on the edge of the pool, their feet splashing in the water, their legs wet and glistening. No, they were just talking. Vivian and I went to a concrete bench and sat down at a cement table under a metal sunshade. My feet were planted in a square of green tiles pretending to look like grass. I took the tape off my fingers and crumpled it in my pocket. Vivian was watching me doing it and now I looked at her.
—Cué came to see you and ran away.
She gazed at the swimming pool and at Cué and his harem of damp groupies. She didn’t need to point him out nor would she have done so even if it was necessary.
—No, he didn’t come to see me. He came so they could see him.
—Are you in love with him?
She wasn’t surprised by the question, she just burst out laughing.
—With Arsen? She laughed some more. —With that face?
—He’s not ugly.
—No, he isn’t. In fact there are many girls who consider him pretty. But not as pretty as he thinks he is. Have you seen him without his sunglasses?
—Yes, on the night I met you (was I giving myself away), when I met you all.
—I mean during the day.
—I don’t remember.
It was the truth. I think that once or twice I had seen him when he was on television. But I hadn’t paid any attention to his eyes. I said that to Vivian.
—I don’t mean on television. There he’s playing a part and it’s different. I mean in the street. Take a good look at him next time he takes his glasses off.
She sipped at her cigarette as though it was an inhalant and let a cloud of smoke loose from her mouth and nostrils. I broke into her aerosol of tar and nicotine.
—He’s a famous actor.
Before talking she removed a threadworm of tobacco from her lips by picking it with her fingers and I suddenly realized how in Cuba the men spit out any dirt that clings to their mouth, while the women pluck it off with a fingernail.
—I could never love a man who has eyes like that. Still less an actor.
I didn’t say a word but I felt uneasy. Was I an actor? I also asked myself how my eyes would look in her eyes. Cué returned before I could answer myself. He looked worried or contented or both things at once.
—Let’s go, he said to me, and to Vivian: —It looks like Sibila won’t be coming today.
—I don’t know about that. And I noticed or wanted to notice that she gave an extra degree of pressure to the cigarette when she stubbed it out on the concrete table. She threw it away into a corner. Then she went back to the pool. —Good-bye, she said to us both and then, gazing into my eyes, only to me:
—Thank you.
—For what?
—For the cigarette and the match and (adding I think without malice, though she paused a minute) for the conversation. I watched Cué walking off seeing nothing of him but the back of his trench coat. We were leaving the patio when someone started shouting.
—Someone’s calling us, I told him. It was a boy who was waving at us from the water. He must have been signaling Cué because I didn’t know him. Cué turned around. —It’s for you, I said.
The boy was making strange gestures with his arms and head and was shouting Arsenio Quackquackquack. Now I understood. He was imitating a duck, which can
also mean a fag in Cuba. I don’t know if Cué understood the allusion, but I think he did.
—Come on, he said. —Let’s go back to the pool. It’s Little Brother. Sibila’s, that is.
We went to the edge and Cué shouted to the boy, calling him Tony. He swam toward us.
—What is it?
He was as young as Vivian and Sibila. He clung onto the side of the pool and I saw he had a gold bracelet round one arm, a dog-tag made of gold. Cué spoke to him slowly, picking his phrases.
—You’re the one who’s a duck. When you were swimming. Now you’re a dead duck. He had understood. I laughed. Cué laughed too. The only one who didn’t laugh was Tony, who looked at Cué in terror, his face grimacing with pain. I didn’t understand why but I soon found out. Cué crushed the fingers of one of his hands with his foot pressing down on it. Tony cried out and thrust his legs against the side of the pool. Cué let him go and Tony shot off backward, swallowing water, trying to swim with his feet, holding his hand to his mouth, almost in tears. Arsenio Cué was laughing now, smiling on the edge of the pool. I was surprised not so much at what had happened as at the fact that he seemed pleased with himself, gloating over his revenge. But when he left he was sweating and he took off his glasses to dry his face. As a concession to the heat and the afternoon and the climate he took off his trench coat too and carried it over his arm.
—Did you see that? he asked.
—Yeh, I said and as I spoke I took the opportunity to have a look at his eyes.
V
I said that this story would have nothing to do with Cuba and now I’m going to have to give myself the lie because there isn’t a thing in my life which doesn’t have to do with Cuba, Cuba Venegas I mean. The night I’ve been talking about I had gone to the Sierra with the pretext of hearing Beny Moré, which is a pretty good pretext because Beny is pretty good himself, but in fact I had gone to see Cuba and Cuba (“the most beautiful singer human eyes have heard,” as Floren Cassalis said) is for the eyes what Beny is for the ears: when you go to see her you go to see her.
Three Trapped Tigers Page 10