—I beg to remain. The night is still young, as another wise man says through Rine’s mouth. Or as Marx says, the air is like wine tonight. There is still plenty to be seen, thank God and Mazda. The latter, as you know, is not the Assyrian divinity of light. Suppose we get something to eat?
—I’m not hungry.
—The dish invents the appetite, as Trimalchio would say. We still have our credit account with First National Rine. The gift of Don Rine or Donation Rine. Or even better, the Rine Leal Memorial Foundation Phallowship. We’ve got enough left for a royal banquet, a feast fit for Falstaff’s friend. A cena chameleonis.
—I really don’t feel like eating. Not tonight.
You just keep me company then. Forget us this night our early bed. Have a glass of Lethe with a slice of lemon, ice and sugar. Milk of amnesia, that’s its name. Then I’ll drive you to your door. To sleep till day be morrow.
—Danke. It’s very considerate of you. For a moment I thought you would just leave me at the entrance of the metro, subway, tube or subte or whatever it’s called in those civilized countries where they travel in them. In other words, where the cold belongs to rich and poor alike.
—Stay a little longer.
—I can’t. I must go home.
—You’re not going to write all this down, are you?
—Come on. I haven’t written a thing for ages.
—Remind me to buy you a Nussbaum wristband at the five and ten as soon as they open tomorrow morning. The leaflet says that it’s the best remedy against writer’s cramp.
—You jerk. Who showed you the clipping?
—You did. Silvestre Primero, the man who was first to arrive,
I-named-it-before-Adam, the Disc-Overer who saw Cuba (Venegas) before Christoforibot, the first man on the moon, the master who teaches you everything before he’s even learned it, the One and Only, Top Banana, Plotinus’s one, Adam, Nonpareil, the Ancient of Days, Ichi-ban, Numbero Uno, Unamuno. Salve, I, El Dos, Yang to your Yin, Eng to your Chan, the Disciple, the Plural, Number Two, Second Fiddle, Dos Passos, the 2, salute thee, I who am about to die. But I don’t want to do it alone. Let’s continue to be, as the enlightened Códac once said, the twins, Marcandtwain, Eribó’s ñáñigo version of the Gemini, two friends and come with me please.
What do you expect? I’m susceptible to flattery. Besides; Cué, as always, wasn’t slowing down for anybody. I wasn’t going to jump out. So once more we became Cuéstor & Pollee, the heavily twined.
—O.K., I’m coming with you. As long as you promise to go slower.
—Da, little father. How many versts an hour?
He slowed down to a walking pace and I was able to ride back to El Vedado in Cué’s buggy. I pointed to the horizon.
—A perfect Universal Pictures backdrop for my scene with Créole Dubois not so long ago.
There was a storm on the horizon. I asked him to park so we could see it better. It was worth the trouble and cost us nothing. Being free it would have delighted Rine, even though he’s afraid of the elements. There were fifty, a hundred lightning flashes a minute, but we couldn’t hear any thunder, except for a muffled rumbling every so often, when no cars were passing. A distant kettledrum beaten with baguettes d’éponge, Hector Berlioz Cué said. (I laughed, but I didn’t tell him why.) The lightning flew from the sea to the sky and back again, in balls of fire, arrows of quicksilver, white streaks in a blinding network of blue-white branches and from time to time the whole sky was lit up for two or three seconds and then went black again but immediately a single flare ran parallel to the horizon till it dropped or drowned in the sea making a bubble of light in the waters, which were completely calm and received the lightnings with the same indifference as they reflected the harbor lights on this side. Now on the left another storm served as a mirror to sea and sky. I saw yet another storm, then another and another. There were five different electric storms along the horizon, lightning weaving a neon tapestry in the dark.
—A splendid celebration of some forgotten Fourth of July, Cué said.
—It’s the Wave of the East.
—What?
—It’s called the Wave of the East.
—So thunderstorms have names now, like hurricanes? Adamania is loosed upon the world. Soon they’ll have a name for each cloud and every wave.
I laughed.
—No. It’s a meteor formed above the eastern provinces which runs all along the coast to disappear in the Gulf Stream.
—Where the hell do you get all this information from?
—Don’t you read the papers?
— Only the headlines. I’ve got an illiterate or a shortsighted man inside me. Or maybe it’s a woman as you and Códac say.
—An article came out a short time back on these “electrical phenomena,” signed by Carlos Millás, engineer and captain of corvette, director of the Navy Observatory.
—Naval brass.
We went on looking at the storms for a while watching them turn the sky and sea into a myorama version of the cabinet of Dr. Frankenstein.
—What does it make you think of?
—That it’s coming from the same place as us.
—From Johnny’s Dream?
—No, you dope, from Oriente province.
—His captainship the engineer Millás wasn’t referring to our Orient but to that more abstract one on the compass rose of farts, vulgo winds, and which you can find exactly over on the right ear of the Aeolus printed on the maps.
He drove off and we slid forward at the speed of an early astronomer. An astronomyer.
—I imagine, Cué said, —that in earlier times they used to think it was hell coming up for air. What would you say about that, Ancient Mariner?
—They had Vulcan or Hephaistos and an Olympic forge to account for and even Jupiter with his multiple ire.
—Not so far back as that! History’s your time-Malecón. In the Middle Ages, I mean.
—Haven’t you read in the books that these were the Dark Ages? They didn’t even allow themselves the luxury of using lightning lighting. Coal miners in a tunnel at midnight, that’s what they were. Seriously, I imagine they explained it by saying it was another form of the wrath of God. But after all, it couldn’t have been much of a problem for them. Don’t forget, the Middle Ages didn’t get as far as the Tropics.
—How about the Indians?
—We Redskin people love prairies of earth and heaven. We no care about pyrotechnics of the great spirit.
—Pyrotechnics of the great spirit. An Indian talking like that! Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?
—Me Cherokee. Big chief me give poetic licenses. Were they very cultured?
—Haven’t you heard of the contraries?
—No. Who were they? A tribe?
—A caste within the tribe. A prairie-Samurai. Warriors who because of their bravery in combat and their nimbleness with arms and their skill at riding horses were able to break the laws of the tribe in time of peace.
—What’s the moral?
—It’s very interesting. Seriously. The contraries were famous tricksters who fucked everything up because they always did the opposite of what was expected of them. They didn’t greet anybody, not even another contrary. They knew what they could depend on. For example, there’s the story of an old woman who was cold and went to a contrary to get a skin from him to keep herself warm. The contrary didn’t even answer her, although it is obligatory to answer your elders. The old woman returned to her tent cursing these new times in which nobody had any respect for anythin’, with traditions dying out and young Indians wearing their hair short. What are us Indians headed for anyway? If only Chief Rutting Bull were alive! He wouldn’t let things like this happen. After many a summer died the baldheaded eagle and that very morning when the old woman got up she found. a human skin in front of her tent. Feeling duped and disappointed, she laid her complaint before the council of the elders. The elders assembled and judged that a punishment was called for. For the o
ld woman! In consideration of her age, she was only given a reprimand. You wold woman (they said, I imagine, the Indian equivalent of these words ), the blame is yours and only yours. Don’t you know, Krazy Kow, that you mustn’t ask anything of a contrary? On you and your family the curse of the soul of this poor corpse will fall.
—That’s an Indian gift for you.
—Indian justice, rather.
—Contradictoria contradictorii curantur. Does Perry Mason know this case?
—It’s in his Indian files. Mason is a contrary. So is Philip Marlowe. So is Sherlock Holmes. There’s no great literary character who isn’t. Don Quixote is a perfect example of an early contrary.
—What about you and me?
I thought of telling him to be more modest.
—We aren’t literary characters.
—What about when you write down our night deeds?
—Even then we won’t be. I’ll be a scribe, just another annotator, God’s stenographer but never your Creator.
—That’s not what I’m asking you. What I want to know is will we or won’t we be contraries?
—We won’t know till the final episode.
—Is Haulden Coldfield a contrary?
—Of colts.
—And Jake Barnes?
—Sometimes. Colonel Cantwell is a good contrary. Hemingway too.
—That’s what you say.
—I interviewed him once and he told me he had Chickasaw blood. Or Ojibway, was it?
—Did they have contraries in those tribes too?
—It’s quite possible. Everything is possible on the wide open prairies of the West.
—What about the tightly shut patios of the past? Was Gargantua a contrary?
—No, nor was Pantagruel. But Rabelais was.
—And Julian Sorel?
Did I hear an oral row of dots between the conjunction and the name, a suggestion of doubt, a dashing bridge of necessity and fear at the same time, a daring modulation in his voice? Even if I hadn’t heard it Cué’s mouth compensated with a hyphenated smile.
—No, he’s not one. Sorel is French and as you’ve seen for yourself the French try as hard as possible to be ractionalists to the point of madness. They are deliberately anti-contrary. Even Jarry wasn’t a contrary. There hasn’t been one since Baudelaire. Breton, who tried so hard to become one, is about as far from being a contrary as he could be. He’s a pseudo contrary. Beyle might have been one, if he’d been born in England, like his friend Lord Byron.
—How about Alphonse Allais?
—Sí Allais: this gift-wrapped palindrome is for him.
—Only because you like it.
—Who invented the game?
—O.K., so you did. But don’t quit the game with your bat and glove and balls.
I smiled. Was it a smile of humble origins?
—Was Shelley one?
—No, but his wife Mary definitely was. She was the doctor Frankenstein of Frenkenstein.
—Is Eribó a contrary?
—You won’t become one yourself just by jumping to and fro like that. You’ll only be an epileptic inquisitor.
He smiled. He knew. I’d given him my oracle, with an Rx printed on it.
—I wouldn’t say so. Eribó is presumptuous, and self-sufficient.
—And Ascyltos?
If he was jumping I could go one higher.
—He was a contrary. So was Encolpius. Giton too. But not Trimalchio.
—Julius Caesar?
—Yes, of Corse he was. Aside from that, he was a modern man. If he were here today he’d be able to talk with us without much trouble. He would even be able to learn Spanish. I wonder what Spanish would sound like spoken with a Latin accent.
The archaic smile of early Greek sculpture appeared clearly chiseled on his lips. The fact that it was night and he was in profile added to the effect.
—And Caligula?
—He was perhaps the greatest of all.
We turned into Paseo and drove up past those natural terraces that history had turned into a park, and which always make me think I’m in its twin, Avenida de los Presidentes, and we drove down again along 23rd Street heading for La Rampa, where we turned into M and down M till we turned off at the Havana Hilton, and went up 25th and into L Street to go into 21st, crossing 23rd Street under auspicious traffic signals.
—Look, Cué said, —talking about the king of Rome.
I thought that Caius Caesar was strolling along La Rampa in his golden caligae. He was another modern man: witness Hitler and Stalin. He would have liked La Rampa and would hardly have been out of place there. Less out of place at any rate than that horse he made consul. But they were neither Caesar nor Incitator.
—There goes the S. S. Ribot, Cué said, —keeling over because of a heavy payload of alcohol and goatskins.
—You mean the Saint-Exupery of are drums?
—Oui, monsieur.
I took a good look unimpeded by Cué’s intrusive profile.
—That’s not Eribó.
—Isn’t it?
He braked and took another look.
—You’re right. It’s not. Shit, but it’s like him. As you can see, everybody has his doppelgänger or, as you’d say, his ribot from Mars. Magalena had a point: everything here’s foreign made.
—I didn’t see the likeness.
—That means that even the concept of a double is relative. Everything is points of view.
I resolved to make a start and artificially provoke revelations, since I was so adept at producing them spontaneously.
—Tell me something. Did you sleep with Vivian?
—Vivien Leigh?
—I’m talking seriously.
—D’you mean to say that that noble first avatar of Blanche Dubois isn’t serious?
—Seriously I’m talking seriously.
—Could you mean, Vivian Smith-Corona y Alvarez del Real, by any chance?
—Yes.
He seized the moment to turn back along 21st and bear toward the Nacional with all sails unfurled. Captain Kuédd. Was it a way of not answering me? We cruised into the green gardens of the hotel, a live lush lobby.
—Where do you want to eat?
—You’re forgetting I don’t want to eat.
—How about the Monseñor.
—I’ll go where you go. Consider me your spiritual bodyguard. He made a deep bow.
—O.K. Let’s go to Club 21. I’ll leave the car here. It’s always good to have a friend to cast an eye on your horses.
An eye with a cast in it, I thought. We drove into the parking lot and left the car under a lamp. Cué went back to get the key. He glanced up at the sky.
—Do you think it’s going to rain, dear Gally Leo?
—I doubt it. The storm is still over the sea.
—Great. I guess that reading the reports from the front is better training for a soldier than a battlefield. Vamoose.
—Nothing’s been written about our heavens.
He looked at me with his head cocked on one side and his eyebrows wrinkling ironically. Cuépernicus.
—I was talking about the Cuban sky, I said.
He paid at the gate.
—Hasn’t Ramón come by?
—Ramón who?
—The one and only Ramón, Ramón García.
—The thing is I’m called Ramón too. Ramón Suárez, at your service.
—I’m so sorry. Isn’t the other Ramón here?
—He’s out on duty. Did you want him for something?
A message to García, I thought and almost said.
—I just wanted to say hello. Tell him Arsenio Cué was asking for him.
—Cué. Fine, sir. I’ll tell him tomorrow or I’ll pass it on to him if I don’t see him.
—It’s not important. Just hello.
—I’ll see he gets it.
—Thanks. Bye.
—You’re welcome. Good-bye, sir.
Versailles. If le Nacional m’était conté. We are w
alking under the palms and I stopped to look at the nymph that holds a cup of everlasting water in the hotel fountain, naked, barefoot, balancing on tiptoe, surrounded by night but lit up by a flood-lamp that tried to throw a light of scandal on a drunkenness both blatant and private, almost an intimate act of narcissism, like the girl who looks at herself naked in the bathroom mirror and is surprised by the watchful, meddling eye of a Peeping Tom. It was an obscene lighting effect. Sin & lumière.
—Pretty, eh? She gets high on water. Be thankful, Silvestre, that Pygmalion and Condillac aren’t on the prowl. She’s nuts, like all women. Besides, she’s too clean for my liking. She’s spoiling her flavor.
—Why does he have to put on this English accent which only succeeds in being Jamaican singsong?
—I know a couple who aren’t crazy.
—More power to you. But keep your station. I’m speaking to you as a friend.
Who the fuck asked for his advice? Señorita Lonelyhearts.
—It’s a watering Lily, he said as my eyes wrapped the wet wench scopophillically. I never told him that I had one eye closed while I was panning around the fountain.
Arsenio greeted the cripple who sold gardenias in front of the Casino del Capri and bought a flower off him and exchanged a few words, which I didn’t hear because I wasn’t interested.
—Do you wear gardenias in your buttonhole?
—I don’t even have a lapel on my jacket.
—Then what are you going to do with the flower?
—I’m just helping a poor invalid.
—Of the wars of the roses? More flower to you.
—I’d do no less for Jake Barnes or Captain Ahab. Besides, a chorus girl is bound to deflower me sooner or later.
Sooner. Out of the silk hat of the night a rabbit jumped. A bunny rabbit. She was the spitting image of the hydromaniac nymph.
—Cué, my darling! What a pleasure to see you!
The pleasure is yours. Dildo-it-yourself. Let me present you with this flower. sIrene, Flowers to the flowerlet. Lastly let me introduce you to my friend here. Silvestre Goodknight, Irenita Atineri.
—Howdy, marm.
—How gallant you are. Ooh what a lovely name! Dee-light-ed. She stripped her lips to teasingly show off her lovely teeth.
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