—I’m a night gallant, said Cué.
—The pleasure is mine, belladonna.
—He’s cute too, isn’t he. You’re both alike.
—You mean you don’t know who’s who and who’s Cué?
She laughed. She came from a different circle than Magalena and Beba.
—But I love you both the same.
—But one at a time, Cué said.
She went off to a round of kisses and ciaos and come and see me at Las Vegas one of these days. One of these nights, Cué said and turned to me:
—What did I tell you? A deadly night show.
—You know the topography of your inferno.
—La Rampa it’s called in Spanish. Sorrry, I mean in Cuban.
At the door of Club 21, I confessed.
—I can’t get this chick out of my head.
—Irenita?
—I gave him one of his topical looks.
—You mean the statue then? That’s nympholepsy, mi viejo.
—Don’t fuck around.
—Flowero is a man, so’s homomorphism then.
—I’m referring to Magalena, you jerk. I can’t stop thinking about her. She’s bewitched me. She’s a witch. Fata Magana. Magan le Fay.
Cué stopped in his tracks and held onto one of the pillars of the marquee, as though the steps were a wellhead.
—Come again.
His tone of voice surprised me too.
—She is a witch. Maga Lenay.
—Say that again, please. The name and the title, nothing else.
—Maga Lenay.
—I got it!
He jumped backward and struck his forehead with the palm of his hand. I think he’s got it. By Tod he’d Gott it!
—What’s happening?
Nothing nothing at all he said and went into the restaurant.
XX
Arsenio Cué ordered roast chicken, french fries and apple sauce plus a green salad. I ordered a hamburger with mashed potatoes and a glass of milk. Hold the may please. He was almost bad-mannered, talking about the chicken as he ate it. I felt I was repeating myself, that I was back once more in Barlovento.
—I would suspect, he said, —that there is some relation between board and bed, that food and fuck share the same fetishes. When I was young or younger rather, when I was adolescent (he said ad-do-l-es-cent, lengthening his syllables to indicate the passage of time), some years ago, I really went for the breast of chicken and always ordered it. A girl friend told me one day that men always go for the white meat and women like the legs. It seems she tested this theory every day at dinnertime. If they served chicken in the boardinghouse.
—Who eats the wings, neck and gizzard, then?
Me, who else? I always let myself be gone with the winds of conversation.
—I don’t know. I suppose that’s the poor man’s chicken.
—I’ve got a better hypothesis. Let me suggest a possible triad. Steve Canyon, Count Dracula and Oscar Wilde. In that order.
—The gizzard of Ozcar.
He laughed and wrinkled his brow, the same ironical grimace as before. He’s the daring young face on the flying trapeze.
—I thought the woman was right, if she thought she was. I also thought that my friend (I won’t tell you her name because you know her well), who was very poetic or at least pretended to be, had certainly just been reading Virginia Woolf. But today I look back in hunger on that conversation because I find now I prefer the leg to the breast.
—I’m a leg man myself. Have we become effeminate?
—I fear something worse: the sudden rout of the theory before the brute fact of the praxis.
It was my turn to laugh and I did so with simple pleasure. The exterminating angel couldn’t have had a sense of humor. Neither this nor any other angel, archangel, throne, cherubim or seraphim. Humor always leads to the fall.
—You know, now that you mention leg of chicken, the thing I look at most in a woman is her legs. Not only that but I had a dream a short while back where I was at a particularly oneirific banquet and they served me Cyd Charisse’s legs with boiled potatoes.
—What do you think the boiled potatoes means?
—I don’t know. But there’s a certain method in your hidden blond friend’s mad idea. (He looked at me with a start when I said blond and then smiled. I was just on the point of saying, Elementary my dear Cuatson when I went on) I used to like breast best and that was the time when Jane Russell and Kathryn Grayson were in style, in me, that is, and a little later, Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield and Sabbrina!
—Have you dreamed of any of them lately? If so, pass me the dreamer, please.
—We’re all living on borrowed dreams.
I stopped in middream and made a show of being interested in dessert. I fancied a flan followed by coffee. Cué said strawberry shortcake and coffee. Dessert became desert. Not because he ordered a strawberry shortcut, but because I imitated Stanislayski’s method of dramatic pauses, which I’d copied from him et alias. It was then that the waiter thought of asking if the gentleman would like a liquor afterward. I said no.
—Do you have any cointreaury?
—Come again?
—Do you have any Cointreau?
—Yessir. Do you want a glass?
—No, bring me some Cointreau.
—That’s what I said.
—No, you asked me, you didn’t say anything. And you asked me if I wanted a glass. But you didn’t say a glass of what.
—You already said you wanted a quntrow.
—She must be a friend of mine.
—Who’s she?
—Forget it. It’s a joke and besides it’s personal. Bring me a Benedictine, but not a monk, please, I want a glass of Benedictine. The liqueur.
I didn’t laugh. He didn’t give me time. He didn’t even give me time to remember what we were talking about.
—Is Jay Gatsby a contrary? I gave a reflex answer.
No, nor’s Dick Diver or Monroe Starr. Nor’s Scott Fitzgerald. On the contrary, they’re very predictable. Same with Faulkner. It’s curious but the only real contraries in his books are Negroes, though only the proud Negroes, like Joe Christmas and Lucas Beauchamp, and maybe one or two of the poor whites, or the carpetbaggers called arrivistes in la Nouvelle Orléans. But not Sartoris or the other aristocrats; they’re too rigid.
—How about Ahab? Was he or wasn’t he?
—No. And Billy Budd still less.
—The only contraries in American literature are the half-castes. Or people who behave like half-castes.
—I don’t know how you came to this conclusion. It can’t be anything I said. What do you mean by “behave like half-castes”?
—It’s a strange mixture of behaviorism and race prejudice.
—Oh, Silvestre, come on, we were talking about literature not sociology. Besides, it was you who said that Hemingway was a contrary because he was half Indian.
—I didn’t say that! I didn’t even say Hemingway was half Indian or half back. All I said was that he told me in an interview that he had Indian blood. How could anybody be half Indian? D’you mean that one half was white and had a beard and wore spectacles and the other half was clean shaven, dark-skinned and had eagle eyes? That Mr. Ernest was white and wore a hat and a tweed jacket while Chief Heming Way went about with a feather headdress and smoked a peace pipe when he wasn’t waving a tomahawk?
I’m the Perry Mason of the underdeveloped and of waiters and especially of underdeveloped waiters. Cué made a very professional gesture of despair.
—Wassa matta?
—Dost thou come here to dine? Show me what thou’lt do! Eat a crocodile? Or Lobster Quadrille?
—No, Kronprinz Omlette, this is not the Gesta Danorum. But let me tell you this, the notion of the contrary comes from a treatise on sociology.
—So? Weren’t we talking about literature?
I couldn’t agree with him and say I found sociology as interesting as Bustrófedon righ
t now must find the concept of being, or confide in him that perhaps we were giving back contrariety to the Indians.
—Not talking about, playing with literature.
—And what’s so bad about that?
—Literature, of course.
—That’s better. For a moment I was afraid you were going to say the game. Shall we go on?
—Why not? I could go on to tell you that Melville was a formidable contrary and so was Mark Twain, but that Huck Finn isn’t, nor is Tom Sawyer. Maybe Huck’s father was, if we knew more about him. As for Jim, he’s always a slave. An anti-contrary, that is. That’s why Tom and Huck aren’t contraries, because they would have exploded at the slightest contact with Jim.
—Permit me to do a Somersault Maugham. Isn’t this a concept from post-Einsteinian physics, amigo?
—Yes. It comes from Edward Fortune Teller. Why do you ask?
—Oh, nothing special. Obrigado. Let the gig go on.
—Guess who’s the most contrary of the contrary Americans?
—I don’t dare, in case there’s an explosion.
—Ezra Pound.
—Who’d have guessed it?
I looked at him. I made a sail, a vessel, a glass with my hands, lifted it, them, to my mouth, I blew out and then breathed in. Red Indian ritual.
—What are you doing?
—Does my breath bother you?
—No.
—Do I have bad breath?
I threw vapor of human water toward his face like when someone goes near a mirror.
—No. It’s O.K. Did I look like it wasn’t?
—No. It’s just me. I thought Hali Tossis was paying me a visit. He’s the Greek shipping tycoon who launched a thousand vessels, all because Curtis made Helen immoral with a kisser.
—Your breath’s the same as mine, it smells of food and drink and too much talk. Besides, don’t forget you’re downwind.
—Some people have halitosis in every quadrant.
—And even in profile sometimes.
We both laughed.
—Shall we play another round?
—It’s better than dominoes.
—At least you don’t have to wear an undershirt to play. Like your father does.
—He doesn’t play dominoes. Or any game.
—He a puritan?
—No. He’s Departyed.
He laughed because he knew it was a joke. Like the time I swore on my father’s ashes, meaning the ones in his ashtray, of my father, who isn’t dead and doesn’t smoke or drink or play games. He abstemious? No, he’s Cuban though a founding father of the Party. A teetotalitarian.
—Do you wear an undershirt, Arsenio?
—Me? No, qué va! How about you?
—No, I don’t either. Or long shorts.
—Glad to hear it. Shall we go on?
—You cut, I’ll deal.
—You deal, I’ll Cué. Quo vadis Cuévedo? Quevedo, the poet who declared lust to dust? Francisco Gómez de Quevedo y Villegas, don Paco who is only sensible ashes now in Newville of the Infantes, Don Poco, was he or wasn’t he?
—Quevedo lives!
—Only in memory.
—In literature too. But your question was answered, avant la lettre, like so many others, by Borges, who says that Quevedo is no writer but literature. He’s no gentleman either or even man, he’s humanity. He’s the history of Spain in his time. Nor is he a contrary because history itself was contrary then.
—So Cervantes is no contrary.
—No señor.
—What about Lope?
—Don Félix Lope de Vega y Carpio, the Phoenix of Wits, the fucking priest who wrote 1,800 comedias?
—Sí señor.
—Lope was less a contrary than anyone. He’s a too frequent Phoelix rising from his own arson. Creator of the Carpio Diem, he was the opposite of Shakespeare.
—What about Marlowe?
—Our wholy father who is in Hellen.
—Are you a contrary?
—Just a figure of speech.
—Who? You or the contrary?
—I mean my way of speaking.
—Be careful. Ways of speaking are also styles of writing. You’ll end up by spiking Spunnish. Or using blank pages for graffiti, or having an origami on paper. Vade rhetor.
—Do you think that rhetoric is to blame for bad literature? It would be like blaming physics for the fact that we all fall down.
He please-turn-overed the page of conversation with his hand in rapid flight.
—Who d’you know who’s a contrary? I mean you personally.
—You.
—I’m talking seriously.
—So am I.
—So you are one?
—I’m talking seriously.
—So am I.
—You are, you really are a contrary.
—So are you.
—I’m speaking seriously.
—So am I. You even have what’s needed to make an early contrary, according to you.
—Really?
Vanity. It leads to the perdition even of those who are already missing. O Solomon!
—Yes, really. You’re Indian. Or half Indian. I’m sorry, I mean you have Indian blood.
—And Negro and Chinese and possibly even white.
He laughed. He shook his head as he was laughing. Is it possible to do that?
—You’re a Mayan. Look at yourself in the mirror.
—No, because then I won’t be a Mayan but an Aztecué or an Incué.
He didn’t laugh. He should have, but he looked more serious than a cigar-store Indian.
—Listen. You’ve proved my point right now. You don’t even need to spill Indian blood. Only a contrary would or could behave like that.
—No kidding?
Something was bugging him.
—Really?
—Why don’t you write a book on Character Assassination Considered as One of the Fine Arts?
—One thing I do know, neither you nor I are contraries. We’re eyedentical, as your friend Irenita said.
—The same person? A binity then. Two persons and one single true contradiction.
I threw my napkin on the table, without meaning anything by it. But there are gestures that force one’s hand and when the napkin fell on the tablecloth, white on white, we both knew that I’d thrown the towel in the ring. Riot win the glen. Write in the long. El thin Ringo wet. The match was over, naturally.
—When shall we have a return bout?
—What, after beating you like that, over fifteen rounds?
—Think of it as a technical K.O., O.K.?
—O.K., schmelling Gut. Tomorrow. Another time. Mañana. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. Next season in Hell. The twentieth of Maybe.
—Why not now? That way I’ll learn.
Good, Arsenio Gatsby, better known in the ring as the Great Cué, you’ve asked for it.
—I’d rather the other way around and you teach me. I have another game, Arsenio. And it’s one you know much better than me.
—Let’s hear it.
—First I’m going to tell you the dream. Do you remember? We were talking about dreams.
—About breasts, I thought.
—Breasts and dreams.
—A good title for Thomas Woolf. Of breasts and dreams.
—Let’s talk about another kind of literature, the metaliterature of dreams.
I stopped in my tracks. You know that situation when one really stops short in a conversation, unable to go on talking, when your words and acts freeze at the same moment, when the voice is silent and one’s movements stand still?
—Please, if you don’t mind, let me tell you the dream that this cryptic girl friend of mine had, a girl friend who’s as secret as yours and almost. as obvious. It should interest you. It’s very similar to yours, this dream.
—To mine? You were the one who told a dream.
—I’m talking about the one you told me this evening.
—This e
vening?
—On the Malecón. On that Malecón which winds around Maceo Park more than once at a time.
He remembered. He resented my reminding him of it.
—It’s a biblical dream a la page. As you’d say.
—So’s this one. My friend, our friend, told me this dream.
The girl friend’s dream
She was sleeping. She dreamed. She remembers that it was night in the night of her dream. She knows she is dreaming but the dream of the dream belongs to another dreamer. It’s black in the dream, very black. She wakes from the dream within the dream and sees that everything in her reality-dream is black. She gets frightened. She wants to turn on the light but she can’t reach the switch. If only her arm would grow longer. But that never happens except in dreams and she is awake. Or is she? Her arm grows and grows and crosses the room (she can feel it, she thinks she can see it outlined in darker black against the blackness of the dream-reality) but slowly, very slow, s,l,o,w,l,y, while her arm is traveling toward the light, in the direction of the light switch, someone, a voice in the dream, is counting backward, from nine downward, and just as he or it is reaching zero her hand touches the light switch and there is an incredible white-white light, a light of a terrible and terrifying whiteness. There is no noise but she fears or rather knows that there has been an explosion. She gets up terrified and finds that her arms are her arms once more. Perhaps the arm which grew was another dream within the dream. But she is frightened. Without knowing why, she goes to the balcony. The sight from there is horrifying. The whole of Havana, which is like saying the whole world, is on fire. The buildings are in ruins, everywhere there is destruction. The light from the fires, from the explosion (she is convinced now that there has been an apocalyptic blast: she remembers she had thought of that phrase in her dream) lights up the scene as though it were broad daylight. A rider appears from out of the ruins. It is a white woman on a gray horse. She gallops toward the building with the balcony, which by some strange miracle is still intact, the balcony, that is, hanging between the ironwork that has turned to ashes, and the rider stops under the balcony and looks up and smiles. She is naked and has long hair. Could she be Lady Godiva? No, that’s not who she is. That rider, that pale woman is Marilyn Monroe. (She wakes up.)
—What d’you make of it?
Three Trapped Tigers Page 45