—What?
—Where are you? Up in the clows someplace, honeychile?
—Come down from that cloud and get back to where you once belong (the good-natured clavier of Johann Sebastian Cuéch). It’s a song to re-member.
—Excuse me, ma’am. I didn’t hear you, I apologized.
—Silvestre, viejo, for heaven’s sake. Nobody’s going to call a lady madam in my car.
—I beg your pardon, I said to Beba mock Apollogetically.
—No, said Arsenio, —in my car you don’t!
They laughed. This ace knows how to be a joker. I’m inkorrigible, but dirigible as well. Blimp!
I’ll make a big effort and now that I’ve ascended to the skies I’ll descend to the humble cabins, even if they do belong to Uncle Tom. We have to go down to the populace, if they’re feminine. To eat the milk of human kindness. In medias res in Carnation.
—What’d you say, Beba?
That’s my voice you just heard. It doesn’t sound like a eunuch’s. I’m no Castrato. Pepin the Short maybe, though I have a good voice for imitating other voices: this time it’s an amiable and attentive and popular voice. Populacrity.
—What do you do, baby?
—I’m an aesthete.
—What! they both said. They were a duo. A capella.
—I’m looking at you (they looked at me) and that’s my occupation. A thing of beauty is a job forever. Giggles. Laughter by Cué.
—But how charming!
—No, niño, I mean what do you do for a living. Agtor, are you an agtor?
—I am a w—
Cué like another librarian came between us.
—He’s a journalist. For Carteles. Do you remember Alfredo Telmo Quilez and the joke about No lampoons? But no, you’re much too young to remember that.
Smiles all round.
—Charmin’.
—You’re very kine to us, Beba said. —But you can buy the magazine on the street, it’s not ancient history.
Not so bad. A trace of humor. A trace is better than nothing.
—But we also sees it in the beauty pallor, don’t we, Beba?
—That’s a woman’s privilege, Cué said. —We are forbidden to enter so sacred a place as your zenana.
—We can only imagine what the mysteries of the Bona Dea are. Cué gave me a look that meant damned Latinist. But he said,
—We have to read it at the barber’s.
—Or at the dentist’s, I said.
He looked at me in the mirror, with grateful eyes. It was my sentimental education. Call me Moreau not moron.
—And you, what do you do there? Magalena asked.
—I work incognito.
I felt Cué’s look fall on me with more force than the combined decibel power of Magalena’s and Beba’s shocked Whatl I decided to ignore Cué. I’m a rebel without a pause.
—He’s joking. It’s because he’s being modest, Cué said.
—Modest Moussorgsky, at your service. And, of coursze, at the czar’s czervice. I got the feeling they weren’t listening. I took no notice of Cué.
—This man here, Cué said, —is one of the first journalists of Cuba and when I say first I don’t mean that he interviewed Columbus when he landed, even if he does have the face of an Indian.
They laughed. One point for the radio.
—And talking about Columbus, Cué said, —where shall we go to in our caravelle?
—Should be pronounced care-a-belle, I said, meaning Magalena. Smiles. They’ve no idea. So they tell Cué. You choose and we’ll sing or dance or what you will. Exwhyzedetera.
—How about a club, bar or cabaret?
—That’s no go by me, Beba said.
—She won’t go, Cué said.
—And we always go everywhere together, Magalena said.
—Where would our Siamese sisters like to go then?
I thought I heard a note in Cué’s voice that sounded more weary than wary. Bad news. Panic in the bourse. Bursa plus inflation equals bursitis. A slump to follow.
—I don’t know, Beba said. —You decide.
Bworse. We were in the Circus Maximus of always. “Take a woman, caress her, ask her what she wants and you’ll have a vicious circle”—Ionescué. “Unable to separate the end from the beginning. Happy animals”—Alcmeon of Cuétona. “Would that all the women in the world had a single head (maidenhead)”—Cuéligula. He was talking again.
—O.K. then, how about a clean badly lit place like el Johnny’s?
—El Yoni. That’s not bad, don’tcha think, Beba?
Beba thought about it. She looked at us: first one then the other, and then she played a game of profiles: she sat there looking at Cué’s profile while showing me the implacable outline of her own face. Pretty mouth. A sober man’s Eve Gardener. Ava to the inebriated. She opened her mouth. Then said to Cué, He’s real cute, talking about Cuéte in that affected, affectionate, popular third person we use in Cuba, in Havana. Folk winsom. He look like a movie star. She closed her mouth. You should never have opened it, Beba Gardner. Only in the dark of a movie house, Cué said. He was talking about his beauty. She smiled. What beauty. (Beba’s I mean.) Cué turned around again to take another look and as a traffic signal stopped us (conventional time interrupting the natural solution of our space continuum) on the Malecón he asked Magalena:
—Don’t we know each other from somewhere?
—I offen see you on TV and lissen to you and all.
—Haven’t we seen each other before? In the flesh.
—Could be. In Códac’s house or on La Rampa.
—Not before that?
—Before what? I thought I noticed a trace of suspicion in her coolness.
—When you were much younger. Three or four years ago, you must have been fourteen or fifteen.
—Don’t remember, honest.
Beauty didn’t remember. Honest. Better. Beba’s interruption was good too. O.K., young feller, you’d better sort it out in your head or wherever, which one you like best, that’s for you to decide, baby. You of course, honey, Cué said, I don’t want to offend anybody present, but you’re unique. It’s just that I thought I knew her when she was a lolittle girl, but I don’t thank heavens for little girls, only for little women. Cross my heart, for you are my vagina pectoris. O.K., said Beba, that makes things different, Ise soore glad to hear it. Magalena laughed. Cué laughed. I thought it my duty to imitate them, but first I asked myself if Beba knew whether Cué kept his heart on the right or on the left. Nobody answered me, I didn’t even answer myself. So do we go or don’t we? Cué said and Beba said yes and Magalena jumped up and down excitedly giving me a promising look. Mentally I rubbed my hands. A difficult exercise, believe me. Arsenio Cué gave me an unpromising look. Spiritually I clenched my fist. Latins are loser lovers.
—Silver Starr.
His voice also sounded promising, but there was a suggestion of a doubt or a question placed on top of it like an accent.
—Yeah?
—Sheriff Silver Starr, we’re running outa gas.
He was putting on a Texan accent. Now he was a marshal in the West. Or a deputa sheriff.
—Gas? You mean no gasoline?
—Horses all right. I mean the silver, Starr. Long o’ women but a little this side of short on moola or mazuma. Remember? A nasty by-product of work. We need some fidutia, pronto!
—I have some, I’ve already told you. About five pesos.
—Are you loco? That won’t get us not even to the frontera.
—Where can we get some more?
—Banks closed now. Only banks left are river banks, because park bancos are called benches in English. Holdup impossible.
—What about Códac?
—No good bum. Next.
—The Teevee Channel?
—Nothing doing. They’ve got plenty o’ nuttin for me.
—I mean your loan shark.
—Nope. He’s a sharky with a pnife, and a wife. Not on talking terms.
I laughed. (In English, that is. Ha-ha instead of ja-ja.)
—Johnny White, then?
—Outa town. Left on a posse. He’s a hideputy sheriff now.
—And Rine?
He fell silent. He nodded approval.
—Righto! Good ol’ Rine. It’s a cinch. Thanks, Chief. You’re a genius.
He turned left and then right and returned finally to the Malecón going in the opposite direction—and it takes me longer to write what he did than he took doing it. The girls on board, picked up and thrown about by the centrifugal and centripetal forces, by the coriolis effect and maybe by the tides, as well as the pull of the moon, that has such an influence on women, were getting seasick and went to the captain to protest.
—Hey, what ya doin’? D’ya wanna kill us or what?
—We’d better get out if he’s gonna go on like that, Beba. Arsenio slowed down.
—Aside from that, Beba said, —would ya quit talking English without subtitles.
We laughed. Arsenio reached out a hand toward Beba and it disappeared into the dark flesh. Beba looked really beautiful, especially now she was only half pretending to be angry.
—It’s just I’d forgotten an urgent message I had to give a friend. I’ve just remembered it. Duty calls.
—You can say that again.
—Beauty calls.
Beba and Magalena laughed. They understood that at least.
—Besides, Beba honey (Cué plugged in his romantic radio voice, the one we, his friends, that is, call Oh what a lovely noise) think of the spiritual side of It. I was talking to Silvestre here about how much I love you, and how my natural shyness doesn’t let me express my passion for you. I told him, Silvestre Here, that I’d made up a poem for you in my head, but that I couldn’t let it gush from my innocent lips for fear of the pitiless criticism that this professional critic right behind me might unleash not to mention how other people might react (and Magalena, who picked up the Cué, immediately said, It’s O.K. by me, because I ain’t said anything and besides I really like potry). It wasn’t for you, beautiful lady, but for others yet unborn but who will be, I hope, someday. I also said to my distinguished friend and fellow traveler here that my heart does a hundred a minute for you and that I am only hoping that it will beat in unison with yours. That was the true and real cause of my distracted driving which must have been so upsetting for you aside from being bad for this excellent automobile. No pun intended.
Beba was enchanted or at least chanting:
—But how charmin’ he is!
—Let’s hear you recite, Prince Charming, please, I said.
—Yes, please, Arsenio Cué, Magalena said enthusiasthmatic.
—C’mon, please, Beba said.
—I beg you, recite it. I’ve always been prone to catch Poets, anyway.
Cué raised a hand over the steering. The one he had lost somewhere in Beba country. Deeply moved by the sound of La Muzique Cuntcrete, he started on a Cuéamble.
—Beba, love of my life, I’ll always have you here, in my breast, next to my wallet, because of these forgettable words which fill me with unspeakable feeling. Pause plus passionate pianissimo. Introduction. Theme. To Beba (a bubbling and trembling of the b’s on Arsenio Cué’s culpable lips, a single version of the two Richards Burtons) to whom I belong in body and (conjunction indicating suspense) soul (with emotional emphasis) this poem which comes from my heart and other parts. Private properties. A clash of symballs, please, night percuéssionist. Love in the place of increment. Blank verses filled to the brim to buttertoast to my beloved. Muffled drums. Stock exchanges. Perfect pitch. (The beardless Aezra Pound-quake profile rises and his tremulous voice fills the car. You’d have to hear Arsenio Cué and see the face of the ladies in waiting. The Greatest Show on Hearse.)
WOULD YOU WERE CALLED BABEL
AND NOT BEBA MARTÍNEZ
O
Oh
Oh, if only you’d say it,
If with your lips you’d say it
Contraria contrariis curantur,
What seems so easy to say for us who are allopathic.
If you’d say it, Lesbia, with your accent,
O fortunatos nimium, sua si bona norint, Agricolas.
Like Horace.
(Or was it Virgil
Publius?)
Or just a little
Mehr Licht
That is so easy
That anybody in a dark moment
Might go and say it.
(Even Goethe.)
If you’d just say it, Beba,
I say, if you’d just say it,
Beba,
Say it,
With Bathos, Baby, not bathe in it:
Thalassa! Thalassa!
With Xenophon in the Grecian mode
Or with Valéry always begun again,
Pronouncing clear and true the final a—ah
A flat a
And with a grave accent on it.
Or if only
Even with
Saint
John
Perse
You’d say it
Ananabase.
If you’d say it
Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all.
With murmuring syllables
like Sir Laurence and Sir John,
Laurence Olivier, Gielgud et al.
Or with the somber gestures of a talking version of Asta
Nielsen with Vitaphone.
If you’d say it on Friday,
Crucified Lesbia on my sheets,
With love:
Eli, Eli, lama sabacthani!
If you’d say it, Lesbia or Beba,
Oh, Baby
(Or better: Lesby Baby, Oh Beba)
If you’d say it
La chair est triste, hélas, et j’a lu tous les livres!
Even if you were lying and all you knew of livres
was their covers and their spines,
Not the volumes
And not even some forgotten title:
A la Recherche du Temps etcetera
Or Remembrance of Things Past Translation
(How good it would be,
how good it
would be,
Beba, si tu pronçais lèvres au lieu de livres!
Beba, if you said lips instead of books!
Then you would not be you
And I not I
And still less you,
I or I,
You:
We would be Saint Augustine and Saint Anselm
Or maybe Augustine and Anselme
Or, simply, Augustin Tant Lara and his carnal Anselma.
Or if you’d just say viande in lieu of chaire,
Though you said it like a martini-quaise,
I would be a happy Nappo
A lion to your carnal, feeble, edible, josephinetude.)
If you’d say it, Bebita,
Eppur (or E pur) si muove,
As Galileo once said in excuse
to those who reproached the astute astronomer
Having married an old ugly whore,
An adulterer who happened to be poor.
If you’d say it, Beba,
Lesbeba,
Although you pronounced it wrong:
If you transformed with your mobile tongue,
animated as though it had a soul of its own,
The little Greek, the less Latin and the no Aramaic into living tongues
Or if you repeated forty-four thousand times
and still many more times
Or even 144
Because the former figure,
The forty-four
thousand, in words, is for the boy in the back and the latter figure
in written numbers is for a hidden destiny,
that’s still hidden: it’s not yet my destiny,
If you’d repeat with my lama
(Lagrán Rampa)
Or with just a modest gurú,
If you’d learn from him to say, murmú
-
ring:
Om-ma-ni Pad-me-Hum,
With no result,
Of course.
Or if you’d make a mudra for me
with your middle finger upright,
and your ring finger and the other, index it’s called,
the two, the four, all the rest
on their sides prostrated there.
If you’d grant me just this favor,
I would be myself no longer,
because I’d be the bardo
not just a bard—man.
But that’s too complicated
and much too hardo.
If you could only say
a simple, single phrase.
If you could say it,
If you could say it and I with you
And with us the whole half world
Le demi-monde
The mali mir
That catch-phrase which reads:
Ieto miesto svobodno!
Svobodnó!
Oh, would you were called not beba, but Babel Martínez!
Oh.
O.
Arsenius Cuétullus fell silent, and the silence continued to fall and reverberate in the car as the Mercury turned into a Pegaso. I almost applauded. What stopped me was the tone of dismay in Babel’s voice. Or Lesbia’s. Or rather the speed with which Beba bounced back, per caputt Cué pedes Cué:
Three Trapped Tigers Page 40