She slipped away from me suddenly. She looked behind me and I thought it was someone coming and I believed she could see in the dark and I wondered if she had a dappled skin or spots or stripes and I told myself she had become black all over again and as she went on staring fixedly, I thought it must be Beba. No, it wasn’t Beba. It was nobody. Nobody was coming. Personne. Nessuno. Nadie.
—What’s the matter?
She was still looking behind me, and I turned around quickly, and there was nobody behind me, nothing, just the night, the darkness, the shadows. I felt afraid or cold at least—yet it was hot, very hot on the banks of the river.
—Anything wrong?
She was in a trance, hypnotized by something I couldn’t see, that I didn’t see, will never see. Were there Martians on the banks? Were they coming by boat? Shit, not even a Martian could see in this darkness. I could hardly even see the white of her eyes. I shook her invisible shoulders. But she didn’t come out of her trance. I thought of slapping her. Gently. It’s easy to slap women. Besides that’s the way they always come out of a trance. In films. Grabbed her shoulders instead.
—What’s bitten you?
She pulled herself free and slipped and fell at the same time over some dark shadowy object that bulked behind or to one side of us. A pile of earth from the works on the tunnel. Earth and maybe some mud too. The river was very near. I could hear the water beating against her breath, an image that has no logic to it, but what do you expect? Nothing had any logic at that moment. At times like this logic slinks out through some pores in the skin. Like cold sweat. I helped her to her feet and could see she was still not looking at me. It’s amazing the number of things you can see in the dark when you’re right in it. She wasn’t looking at me, no, but she no longer had that look of someone lost seeking for nobody in nothingness.
—What was it?
She looked at me. What could it be?
—What’s up?
—Nothing.
She began sobbing, hiding her face. She didn’t need to, the dark made a good handkerchief. Perhaps she wasn’t hiding her eyes because she was upset but against an outside danger. I let go of her hands.
—What is it?
She closed her eyes and bit her lips and her whole face became a somber grimace in the night. Shit. I’ve got lynx’s eyeglasses. Better still, an owl’s. I’m the barn owl of the sowl.
—What the fuck’s wrong?
Do obscenities have magic in them? They certainly conjured up something, because she began speaking in torrents, the words pouring out uncontrollably, beating Cué and me at our own game, because she spoke with a vehement internal violence, stammering over the words.
—I don’t want to. No, no. I don’ wanna go. I can’t go back.
—Where to? Where don’t you want to go back to? To Johnny’s?
—To Beba’s place, I don’ wanna go back with her, she beats me and shuts me up and she don’ lemme speak to anyone, but nobody. Please don’ lemme go. I don’ wanna go back, she shuts me up in a dark room and she don’ give me water nor food nor nuttin’ and she beats me when she opens the door or she opens the door and catches me lookin’ outa the window and she ties me to the foot of the bed and beats me real hard and I go whole weeks not eatin’, can’t you see how thin I am. no. no. Ise not goin’, shit, Ise not goin’ back to her. she’s nuttin’ but a bitch. she treats me like shit and she lets him shit on me too and they don’ mean anythin’ to me that I should put up with this shit and I don’ wanna I don’ wanna Ise not goin’ ta. oh no. Ise not goin’ back. Ise stayin’ right here with you. ya goin’ ta lemme stay with you, right. Ise not goin’ back. don’ let them make me go back nomore.
She looked at me her eyes bulging and she slipped away from me and started running, straight for the river, I think. I caught up with her and held her hard. I’m not strong, I’m fat more like, so that I was breathing hard as I held her, but she wasn’t strong either. She calmed down, she seemed to pull herself together and started looking over my shoulder again, which is not difficult, looking for something precise and concrete. She found it. In the dark.
—Them! she said. Fuck, it’s the Martians. But it was only Cué and Beba. Only one of them was a Martian. Just Beba. Shouting what’s goin’ on here? Why didn’t she add, Moia sestra? Elizabeba Russell.
—Nothing.
—Somethin’ wrong?
—No, I said. We were just walking around here and it was dark and Magalena slipped over. Nothing serious.
She came closer and looked at her/at us/ at her. Another nightbeast. Her look could go right through you on the darkest night. One hundred percent Gorgon. Flash Gorgon.
—I’ll bet she was puttin’ on some act for you. She gets these dramatic spells.
Shit. Dramatic spells. What a way to talk! Hunique wisdom.
—No, I didn’t say nuttin’. Swear to God. We weren’t even talkin’. Ask him.
What’s this shit? Me, a witness? Fuck. What next? Anything you say may be taken down. Or up. Your ass.
—What’s going on here?
Cué. Cuérry Mason. I knew his voice, counseling voice, consoling voice.
—Nothing. It’s just that Magalena tripped and fell.
—A quoi bon la force si la vaseline suffit, Cué said.
They didn’t answer, it was almost as if they didn’t exist, silent in the dark. ShaCuéspeare had turned tragedy into comedy, resolutely.
—Good signiors, keep up your bright swords, for the dew of the night and the river will rust them. Hold your hands, both of you of my inclining, and the rest: were it my Cué to fight . . . and we’ll all go back to the castle.
Shitspeare. We returned to the club. Johnny’s Dream! Who the fuck are you kidding? A nightmare without air-conditioning. As she slipped past me she said (aside) please, don’ let her take me off. be good to me and she went over to Beba Martinez or whatever the shit her name is. They went straight to the ladies’ and I took exception to tell Cué everything.
—Good night, bitter prince, he said. —Now cracks a noble mind. I’m sorry for you. You lucky fucker you. You’ve gone got yourself fixed up with a real nut. As to the other one, she’s her aunt. Even if you don’t believe it, I do because it’s easier that she’s her aunt than anything else. Common and guarded people are always more simple than you think, baroque only comes with culture. Why would she say she’s her aunt if she ain’t? Her aunt, then, told me all about her when you’d both gone away. She was worried about you when she saw you get out. The little girl’s a raving lunatic, she’s attacked people and all. She’s been under treatment. Intensive treatment. Electric shocks and all. Not in Mazorra, fortunately. In the Galigarcía clinic. The cabinet of Doctor Galigarcía, as you call it. She’s been shut up there a couple of times. She escaped from home and did everything she told you about or at least I think she’s just told you outside. Revelations, brother, real-life experience. Great for a writer, but a prize drag, if you’ve got to live with it. I know.
—I’m telling you she’s not her aunt. The fuck she is. She’s a ferocious lesbian, that’s what, and she virtually kidnapped her.
Kidnapped! Shit! Should I call the vice squad?
—So what’s Magalena then? Our Lady of Sorrows? The Black Virgin? I’ll say she is, of course she is. They all are. But that, as your buddy Eribó says when he thinks he’s impersonating Arturo de Cordova, Eso no tiene la menor importancia. Who do you think we are? Judges of morals? Or just two angry men? Aren’t you always saying that morals is a common contract imposed by the majority stockholders? Chiaro, seguro, of course, bien sur, natürlich, the aunt or so-called aunt as you’d call her, or whatever kind of aunt she is, is a dyke or whatever she wants to be when she’s in her room or in bed for half an hour or one hour or two al max, but she’s also a human being and the rest of the time she’s just like you or me, just a person, and she, she told me the troubles she’d had with her niece, or adopted daughter or whatever she is. I don’t believe she was lying. I
know what people are like.
My God. They’d turned him into a shocked shell of himself while I’d been outside. The invasion of the body-snatchers had already begun and they had placed a gigantic has-been pod beside him and the man who was talking to me now was only a replica of Arsenio Cué, a zombi, a doppelgänger from Mars. An Arsenio Cuépy. I told him so and he laughed.
—Seriously, I said. —Because this is serious. You ought to look at your belly button. You are Cué’s robot.
He laughed.
—If I was a robot I’d still have a belly button.
—Right then, you’d have some mole or birthmark or the scar of some wound. But they’d be on the other side of your body.
—So I’m not a doppelgänger then. I’m my mirror image. Eucoinesra. Arsenio Cué in mirrorese. Or in Basic Basque.
—I’m telling you, I’m not joking, this chick’s got problems.
—Of course she has, but you’re not a psychiatrist. And if you decide to become one don’t come running to me for help. Psychiatry leads to disaster.
—Ionesco says that about arithmetic.
—It’s the same thing. Psychiatry, arithmetic and literature all lead to disaster.
—Drink leads to disaster. Cars lead to disaster. Roads lead to disaster. Sidewalks lead to disaster. Boxcars lead to disaster. 707 jets lead to disaster. Sex leads to disaster. Women lead to disaster. Little boys lead to disaster. So do little girls. Ass leads to disasster. Chastity leads to disaster. Origen leads to disaster. Original sin leads to disaster. Translations lead to disaster. Virtue leads to disaster. Monks and nuns lead to disaster. Christianity leads to disaster. The devil leads to disaster. Buddhism leads to disaster. Hash leads to disaster. So does LSD. So does £SD. LSdesaster. Dollars lead to disaster. Even a bent dime leads to disaster. Movies lead to disaster. Dreams lead to disaster. Radio leads to disaster (he made a gesture that meant, you don’t need to tell me that) and water leads to disaster and even coffee with cream leads to disaster. 7-Up and root beer and rye whiskey lead to disaster. So do gin and bloody mary and cuba libres. Drink leads to disaster. Everything leads to disaster.
—I know what I’m saying. There’s no way of getting into the forbidden garden, still less of eating the tree of good and.
—Eating a tree?
—The fruit of the tree, you fucking Russell! Do you want me to recite it to you, to complete the quote (I made signs to say that I didn’t, but it was too late) “Of all the trees of the garden you may eat, but of the tree of knowledge of good and evil you may not eat . . .”?
—Then the best thing to do is not to move at all. To be a stone.
—I’m talking to you about something concrete and real and imminent and, above all, about something which is dangerous. I know a thousand times more about life than you do. Leave the chick alone, forget her. Let her aunt or whatever she is look after her. That’s her job. Yours is something else. Whatever it is.
—Shh, she’s coming back.
They came back all dolled up. Magalena, I mean, because Beba had never been dolled down. Magalena looked like another woman. Or the same, the same as herself, identical to what she was before eternally. Mallarmena.
—Please excuse us but we’s gotta get a move on, the aunt or Beba Martinez or Babel said in her multilingo. —It’s getting even so later.
What rhetoric. Gimme the gist of it ma’am the gift to is the key o’ it the code. The Cuéode. Who said of course and called for the check which he paid with Rine’s money of course. We drove back to Havana and to wherever the beeootiful senoritas would like us gay cabalerros to drop them Cué said still keeping armorous blanks in his Arsenal and the aunt said where we met up with both of you earlier this twilight (of the gals? ) we live very closed and he said fine and shooting straight from the solar plexus he Arsyvarsy told the aunt good real looked she, woman a her of inch every and finally he asked her with finality to ring him up sometime and he gave her his fucking phone number repeating it like a jingle till aunty mome had it by heart and by ear and she said she wasn’t promising anything but she would repeat the call and we’d got to Avenida de los Presidentes and we left them there on the corner of 15th and said good-bye all of us, very friendly, and Magalena got out without even squeezing my hand or slipping a billet not so doux between my fingers or telling me her phone number. Not so much as a scratch except on the record of my memory. That’s life. Some people have all the luck. Some guardian angel looks after them so they never find themselves in Dracula’s castle and they never read too many chivalric romances, because as everybody knows reading the adventures of Glancealot & Gallahead or of the dashing White Night always leads to disaster. What you have to do is to go on your way, all quiet and good, to the movies—at least the real women you find there lead you to nowhere more dangerous than a seat in the stalls. They’re just usherettes. Although in Switzerland there’s this White Russian, several times an exile, who has the idea that even usherettes can lead to disaster. Venus. VD. Vice. What’s to be done then? Stay with Kim Novak? But doesn’t masturbation lead to disaster too? At least that’s what they told me when I was a kid, that I’d get TB, that it softened the brain, that it exhausted your vital fluids. Coño! Life is a disaster area.
XIX
—We could do with some air, Cué said and he slowed down to switch the top down then we tore down 12th and across Linea. Back along the demesnes and terrains of Moebius, vulgo Malecón up and down, topologically.
—We could do with Bustrófedon, I said.
—You still going on about your freak and the dead and the “great men who are no longer with us”? You’ve been ghost-writing too hard, that’s what. Or perhaps ghost-reading too much.
—Do you know what they are, ghosts?
He gave me a look like he wanted to send me to hell or to tell me to stuff it up and then added a gesture of complete helplessness. I’m a helpless case.
—Ghosts or apparitions are the departed who come back or who just can’t let death do us part. Don’t you think it’s fantastic? Dead people who can’t pass away. Immortals, in other words. When I say fantastic, please listen, I mean extraordinary, majestic, monumental, in a lovecrafty way.
—I get your meaning O.K. but, please, you listen to me. I think I’ve told you before that a dead man is no longer a person for me, or a human being, it’s just a corpse, a stiff, a thing. Worse than a thing, it’s just a bit of gray trash that’s no good for anything but rotting and getting more and more hideous every moment.
The conversation was making him nervous for some reason.
—Why don’t you go bury Bustrófedon? He’s beginning to stink.
—Do you know how much it costs to bury a great man when he dies?
He didn’t get what I meant. I recited a list that I knew.
3 boards of cedar wood. . . . . . . . . . . $3.00
5 lbs. of yellow wax . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.00
3 lbs. of gilded nails . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.45
2 packets of wire nails. . . . . . . . . . . . 0.40
2 cartons of candles. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.15
Coffinmaker’s fee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.00
Total . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $7.00
—Seven pesos?
—Seven pesos reales or seven gold dollars perhaps. You must also include a fee for the sexton or the gravediggers. Altogether ten or eleven pesos.
—Is that what it cost to bury Bustrófedon?
—No, that’s what it cost to bury Martí. Sad, isn’t it?
He didn’t answer. I’m not a Martian. Neither of us was. I used to have a great admiration for Marti, but then there was all that stupid fuss about him, everyone trying to make a saint of him and every politico saying he was his son and sole heir, that I got sick of the sound of the word Martian. I liked the word Martian —or even Marxian—or even, heaven help me, Maritain!—better. But it’s true that it’s sad, it’s sad that it’s true, it’s true that it’s sad that it’s
true that he’s dead, dead like Bustrófedon, and this is the thing about death, that it makes all the dead into a single long shadow. This figure of speech is called eternity. While life separates us, divides us, individualizes us, death reunites us and makes us into one long dead man. Shit, Ill end up as the Pascal of poverty. Poorscal. I took advantage of him turning around, I don’t know why, by the Farola de Neptuno, to put off till another day my questions, my question, the question. Don’t put off till tomorrow what you can do yesterday. Carpe diem irae. Todo es posponer. Life proposes, God disposes and man postposes. Silvestre Postcal. Mierda seca.
—O.K., I said, —after this excursion into nothingness, after this season (translating from French, if you’ll permit me and I don’t think you can stop me), this vacation in hell, after this descent into the Maelstrom, after all this transculturation, osmosis or contaminatio, as you’d put it, I’m going to enjoy some less disturbing, more innocent nightmares.
—It’s very late for the movies and very early to be saying adieu.
—I said I was going to enjoy some harmless nightmares, not to have any unquiet dreams. I’m going home to get some sleep, to curl up, to snuggle down: I’m heading back to La Mama, I’m making a journey from imago to cocoon and straight into mommy’s shroud. Nightmeres. It’s safer by Wombbound. Leave the driving to you. It’s always good to travel backward. As a wise man said through the mouth of a queen, you can remember more this way, because you remember both the past and the future. As for me, I like remembering more than I like humble pie.
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