—It’s still raining, shit.
Then he laughed and said le cabron est disparu sous la pluie. He went away singing in the rain. Banished. We laughed. When we got back to the table he asked me over his shoulder, Orson Welles style, which he did so well, truculent like a freshly shaved Arkadin:
—What do you make of it, my anuttara samyah sambodhi?
Cuétama Bugger meant his death and rebirth: his metaphysical resurrection. We’re all very cultured in Cuba, if Cuba means me and my friends. Aside from the dangerous French, we also have a lot of useful English, some Castilian Spanish and a few phrases of Sanskrit thrown in. I begged that there shouldn’t be a Bodhidharma among the customers. I also looked at him—a phoenix—and yawned sleepily.
—You are not yet risen from your own fame.
—That’s what you think.
I took the plunge but he pushed me.
—Did you or didn’t you sleep with Vivian?
—Y-yes.
—Now will you please take off your damn glasses. You don’t need a mask. Nobody knows you here, man.
It was true. We were alone in the diner. There were two or three customers at the bar with their backs to us, and the singer and her accompianist, but they weren’t performing. Were they rained out?
—Was she a virgin?
—Oh, come on, I can’t remember details like that. Besides, it was some time ago.
—Yes and it was in another country and besides the wench is dead for you at least and now you go about and poison wells. Marlowe. The other Marlowe.
—Webster.
—We know what you’re like, we even know when you’re going to start quoting. We can see it coming.
—I wasn’t going to say that.
He was genuinely embarrassed. I didn’t think it was because of Vivian or anybody whose name wasn’t Arsenio Cué or its anagram. Ane (sic) roué. He almost looked like he was about to imitate Quilty and say, “Ah, that hurts atrociously, my dear fellow. I pray you desist.” Arsenio Quelty. The theater of Cuélty. A man with Cuélities.
—Did you sleep with her before Eribó?
—I don’t know. When did Eribó sleep with her?
—He didn’t.
—Then I have to have slept with her before he did.
—You know what I’m trying to say.
—I know what you’re saying. What I’ve just heard.
—Were you the first person she’s slept with?
—I didn’t ask her. I never ask that kind of question.
—Hombre, come on, you’re an old hand.
—Roué. It’s more elegant.
—Turn it off for a minute, will you? Were you the first person Vivian slept with?
—It’s possible. But I really don’t know. She’s studied ballet since she was a kid. Besides, we were both drunk.
—So she was lying to Ribot then?
—It’s possible. If it’s true what he says. Right, so she told him a lie, the cunt. Women always tell lies. They all do.
What followed, what he said next, was so astonishing that if I hadn’t heard it myself I would have thought it was a lie. Pour épater le blasé.
—”Allzulange war im Weibe ein Sklave und ein Tyrann verstecke. (It wasn’t just the quotation that was surprising but the German pronunciation he must have picked up from some actor. Cuérd Jurgens.) Oder, besten Falles, Kuhe.” Friedrich Nietzsche, im Also Sprach Zarathustra. (I was going to tell him, No me jodas!) That’s a truth without a fig leaf. For ages in woman a tyrant and a slave have been concealed, that at best she is a cow. Xackly. Cows, bitches, creatures without souls. An inferior species. Kuhen.
—vNot all of them. Your mother isn’t a cow.
—Silvestre, por favor, what kind of predictable opinion or proverb or good sense are you giving me? I’m not going to take offense if you say she is one. You didn’t know my mother. But I am going to get offended if you go on with this, with this stupid inquisition. Sure I slept with Vivian, what do you think? Sure I was the first person she slept with. Sure she was lying to Eribó. That night, the night I introduced you to Ribot, had you already slept with her?
—Sure. I think so. Sí señor. I had.
—When you were engaged to Sibila?
—That’s enough! You know damn well I was never engaged to Sibila, that I’ve never been anybody’s fiancé, that I detest this word as much as I hate the relationship, that I was going out with her same as you were going out with Vivian that evening. If I had better luck than you, don’t go blaming me.
Is that what it was? Was I jealous? Was she my memory puzzle that love would solve?
—So you made a fool of me that night when I said she would go to bed and you came up with your theory of the ever-virgin typewriter?
—But, my God, so you believed that? It wasn’t an adult’s dose. It was meant for bongo players so as not to tell the truth to a poor fellow like Eribó.
—The truth being that you’d already slept with her.
—No señor. The truth being that she was using him. That she wanted to make me jealous. That she’d never sleep with him because he’s a mulatto, and, what’s worse, because he’s poor. Don’t you know that Vivian Smith-Corona comes from one of the best families?
Poor Arseny Country Cuéb, do you also come from a good family?
—And that’s that. End of scene. Curtain.
He got up. He ordered the check.
—The only thing that bugs you is that you’ve been made a fool of. Please consider this sentence as an epilogue.
Was he right? I like this thesis that I’m afraid of looking like a fool better than the hypothesis of being in love with Vivian Smith. But I wasn’t going to let Arsenio make the last phrase.
—Sit down, please.
—I’m not saying one word more.
—You’re going to listen to me. It’s me who’s doing the talking now. I am going to have the last word.
—You must be joking.
He sat down. He paid the check, put a cigarette in his black-and-silver holder and lit it. He was going to chain-smoke all night now, until the room, the restaurant, the universe was filled with smoke. Cuértains of. How should I begin? It was the thing I’d been meaning to tell him all that night, all that day, for days. The moment of truth had come. I know Cué. All he wanted was to play verbal chess with me. Crossedwords.
—O.K., let’s go. I’m waiting. You pitch. I don’t want any spitballs.
What did I say? Baseball, that’s living chess.
—I’m going to tell you the name of the woman of the dream. She’s called Laura.
I was expecting him to hit the ceiling. I’d been expecting it for weeks, I’d been expecting it all day, all through the evening and the early part of the night. I no longer expected it. He didn’t even jump up. But I had something you don’t: his face opposite me.
—It was she who dreamed that dream.
—So?
I felt like a fool, more than ever.
—It was her dream.
—You’ve already said it. What else?
I fell silent. I tried looking for something better than the usual pat sayings and catchphrases. A phrase to catch. Words and sentences scattered here and there. It wasn’t either baseball or chess, it was a seesaw puzzle. Crisscrosswords.
—I’ve known her for days. A month or two, rather. We’ve been going out. Together, that is. I think, I believe, no: I’m going to marry her.
—Who?
He knew quite well who. But I decided to keep to his rules. Doublecrosswords.
—Laura.
He made as though he didn’t understand.
Laura, Laura Elena, Laura Elena Día.
Never heard of her.
—Laura Dia.
—Díaz.
—Right, Díaz.
—Then why say Día?
Was I blushing? How could I tell? One thing Cué wasn’t now is my mirror.
—You know where you can stuff it. Giving me a diction lesson t
his time of night.
—Elocution, you mean. Your problem is articulation, delivery.
—Stuff it.
—Am I bugging you?
—Me? Why should I be bugged? Quite the opposite, I feel great, tired but in great shape. Like a man who has no secrets. The only thing that bothers me is seeing you sit there like that.
—What do you want me to do? It’s raining.
—I mean I tell you I’m thinking of marrying Laura and you just go on sitting there like that.
—I don’t see why I should sit in any special way just because you say you’re thinking of marrying. What about this pose? Or should I sit in profile?
—What about the name? Doesn’t it ring a bell?
—It’s an ordinary name. There must be at least ten Laura Díazes ringing bells in the telephone directory.
—But this one is the Laura Díaz.
—Of courts, your betrothed.
—Stop fucking around.
—O.K., your fiancée then. Or is it financée?
—Listen, Arsenio, please, I’m sitting here so I can talk with you and you don’t bat an eyelid. Why?
—Primo, it was me who dragged you here and now I’m almost sorry I did it.
Was it the truth? At least it was true he’d insisted.
—Secundo, you tell me you’re getting married. That you’re thinking of getting married. I’m the first to congratulate you. At least I think I’m the first. With luck, I’ll go to the wedding. I’ll buy you a present. Something for the ménage. What more do you want? I’ll be a witness if you like. Or your best man, if the wedding’s in a church and as long as it’s not in San Juan de Letrán, which I loathe, you know why: it doesn’t have a bell tower and they play a record with the sound of bells over loudspeakers : a radio church. Honestly, I’ve done all I could. The rest, mi viejo , is up to you.
Was I smiling? I smiled. I laughed.
—Great, so there’s nothing I can do.
—There is. You can introduce me to your bride.
—Go fuck yourself.
I looked over his shoulder. A sequence shot. People moving. The rain had let up. Patrons were coming into the restaurant. Or leaving. A waiter was sprinkling sawdust in front of the door.
One night in nineteen thirty-seven my father took me to the movies and we went past the town café, El Suizo, with its swinging doors and its marble-topped tables and a huge picture of naked odalisques over the bar, by courtesany of Polar Beer the Beer Everybody Drinks and Everybody Can Be Wrong! and a promised lapland of ice cream behind the counter, and meringues like sleeping beauties locked in a glass case and Pandora boxes of colored corn candies everywhere. That night on the doorstep we saw a funny stripe of wet sawdust. Funny because it hadn’t rained in months. The stream reached the end of the veranda and trickled between the excited onlookers. In that café of the Far Eastern Province an action-packed Western had taken place. A man had gone mad and challenged a rival to a duel. They had been comrades and now they were enemies and there was a hatred between them that you only find between foes who have formerly been friends. “I’ll kill you wherever I find you,” one of them had said. The other man, more cautious or less experienced, trained in secret. The first man met him earlier that night sitting at the bar, drinking a pale rum. He swung a door open and from where he was standing, almost in the street, shouted, “Turn around, Cholo, I’m going to kill you.” He fired. The man called Cholo felt a blow in the chest and fell against the zinc counter, pulling out his revolver at the same time. He fired. His rival fell with a bullet through his head. The bullet that had been aimed at Cholo (by pure chance) lodged itself in the silver glasses case he kept (by pure habit) in the inside pocket of his coat, on the left, above the heart. The sawdust hygienically or piously concealed the spilled vengeful blood of the challenger, now dead. We went on our way. We got to the theater. My father was distressed, I was excited. We saw an old film which had just opened starring Ken Maynard. The Rattler serial. The aesthetic moral behind this bloodstained fable is that Maynard dressed in black, daring and adroit, the black-minded Rattler, and the pale, beautiful girl are real people, are alive. But Cholo and his rival, who were friends of my father, the blood on the floor, the spectacular and absurd duel are shrouded in clouds of dreams and memory. Someday I will write this story down. But first I have told it like it is, to Arsenio Cué.
—Sounds like Borges, he said. —Let’s call it the Theme of the Good Guy and the Heavy.
He hadn’t understood. He couldn’t understand. He couldn’t see that it wasn’t a moral tale, that I’d told it for its own sake, to communicate a minute memory, that it was an exercise in nostalgia. The past didn’t make me bitter. I wasn’t an angry young man. But he couldn’t understand. Period.
—What was Cholo drinking?
—How the fuck should I know? I said.
—It wasn’t a liqueur?
—I tell you I don’t know.
He called the waiter.
—Sir?
—A couple of glasses of what Cholo drinks.
—What?
I looked at him. It was another waiter.
—Two liqueurs.
—Quantrow, benedicteen, marybreezer?
Was it another waiter?
—You choose, I’ll sip.
He went off. Yes, it was another. Where’d he come from? Did they have a waiter factory at the back? Or had he been pulled out of the top hat?
—What was the dead man called?
—I don’t remember.
I corrected myself.
—I never knew. I think.
The waiter returned with two little glasses of a liquor that the French Heredia would have described as couleur d’ambre. Cool it, hombre.
—Here’s to your health and Cholo’s better marxmanship, Cué said, lifting his glass. I wasn’t amused, but I thought perhaps he was beginning to understand and I felt tempted to accept the toast.
To friendship, I said and downed the glass in one gulp. But he became silent. Gulp a glass darkly. In a blackamood. Direobscure he. I hunted for money with a small display, as if wanting to pay the bill now that it was too late, and at the bottom of my pocket I found a new vision of bills—or a. vision of new bills. Could he see surprise written all over my face? I pulled out the bills, all of them. There were three old crumpled peso bills, so blackened by loving handling that Martí almost looked like Maceo, plus two other bills, the kind Cué would have called billets doux. Billing and Cuéing. They were two white slips of paper folded double and I thought immediately that Magalena had left me a note. But what was the other slip of paper? Some advice from Beba? A note from Babel? A message from García? I unfolded them. Shit.
—What is it? Cué asked.
—Nothing, I said, meaning something else.
You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.
I threw them on the table. He read them. He threw them back on the table. I picked them up, made a ball of them and threw them in the ashtray.
—Shit, I said.
—Ah, qué memoria la tuya, Cué said, parodying El Indio Bedoya in the stolen burros scene. —Debe de ser el air-conditioningado.
I picked the slips up again, and smoothed them out on the marble tabletop. I suppose that Arsenio isn’t the last of the Muxicans and that there are still people left in the world with cuériosity.
DO NOT PRINT
Silvestre, Rine’s translation is terrible to put it mildly. If I said it less mildly it would be wildly. Please could you make another version for me using Rine’s text as source material. I also enclose the English original so you can see how Rine constructs his metaphrase, as you’d call it. Make haste not love. Remember we don’t have a story this week and we’ll have no alternative but to use something by Cardoso, that poor man’s Chekhov, or by Pita, which is pitiful. (They’ll pay Rine for the translation whatever happens. What’s got into him that he is now using that incredible pseudonym of Rolando R. Pérez?)
GCI
PS. Don’t forget to write me an introductory note in time. Remember what happened last week. The Ed was foaming Fab (that’s our friendly neighborhoodetergent) at the mouth. Address it to Wangüemert.
BOX
12 Bodoni Bold—
Short Storytellers of U.S. . . .
William Campbell, no kin to the famous manufacturers of canned soups, was born in 1919 in Bourbon County, Kentucky, and has worked in a great variety of jobs before discovering his vocation as a writer. Currently he lives in New Orleans and is a professor of Spanish literature in the University of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He has published three very successful novels (All-Ice Alice, The Cod Came COD and Map of the South by a Federal Spy) and has had stories and articles in the main literary quarterlies of the United States of North America. He was also a roving reporter for Sports Spectator at the 2nd Havana Rally held here recently. He has drawn on his experience in Havana in this stunning story which was published a short while ago in Beau Sabreur. The autobiographical device of the story becomes a literary joke of the finest vintage when one learns that Campbell is a conformed bachelor and sworn teetotaler and that he has not yet reach forty. This short story with its long name will have, then, a double or treble interest for a Cuban audience and Carteles takes great pleasure in offering it to its readers in its first Spanish translation. Now we leave the one in the hands of the other—and vice virtua.
—Shit, I said.
—Can’t you take the note around tomorrow?
—I’ll have to get up at dawn.
—At least you’ve done the translation.
—Hopefully.
Three Trapped Tigers Page 47