Mona and Other Tales

by Reinaldo Arenas

  I don’t know how it is looked on in New York for someone to walk out of a cemetery with a suitcase in hand. The fact is that I did and nobody seemed to mind. A taxi, a plane, a bus, and here we are, once again at the southernmost point in the U.S.A. After I took you for a ride all over Key West—notice how well I pronounce it now—I didn’t want to part from you without taking you along on this ride; without my taking this ride with you. How many times I told you that this was the place, that there was a place that looks like, that is almost the same as, the one over there. Why didn’t you listen to me? Why did you not want to come along with me each time I came? Maybe just to annoy me, or because you didn’t want to be convinced, or maybe because you thought it was cowardly to accept a half solution, a kind of merciful but inevitable mutilation that would have allowed you, at least partly, to recover some of your senses, your sense of smell perhaps, or part of your eyesight. But your soul, your soul had surely remained over there, where it always had been (it will never be able to liberate itself), watching your shadow wander through noisy streets here and among people who prefer to have you touch anything but their car. Don’t touch my car! Don’t touch my car! But I’ll touch it! Do you hear me? And besides I’ll kick it, and I’ll get a stick and smash the windows, and out of these events I’ll write a story (I have it almost finished) to prove to you that I can still write; and I will learn to speak Aramaic and Japanese and medieval Yiddish if I need to, so as never to have to go back to a city that has a Malecón, an old Spanish fortress with a lighthouse, or an avenue flanked with marble lions, leading to the sea. Listen carefully: I am the one who has triumphed, because I have survived and I will survive. Because my hatred is greater than my nostalgia. Much greater, much greater. And it keeps on growing. I think that no one on this key is watching over me or actually gives a damn if I go close to the seashore with a suitcase. If I were over there, I would have been arrested already, do you hear me? With a suitcase and by the seashore, what else could I be doing but boarding a rowboat, or an illegal ship, or even floating away on an inner tube or a raft that would drag me away from hell. Away from the exact same hell where you’re headed right now. Did you hear me? Where you—I’m convinced—want to go. Are you listening? . . . I am opening the suitcase. I’m taking the lid off the box where you are, a bit of gray ashes with a tinge of blue. I touch you for the last time. For the last time I want you to feel my hands, the way I’m sure you feel them, touching you. For the last time, what we are made of will join together, we’ll mingle with each other. . . . Good-bye now. Go soaring, sailing away. Like that. Let yourself be carried away by the currents, let them propel you and take you all the way back. Sea of Sargasso, ominous ocean, divine waters, accept my treasure; don’t reject my friend’s ashes; in the same way that while over there, desperate and infuriated, both of us begged you so many times to bring us to this place, and you did. Take him now to the other shore and lay him down gently on the place he hated so much, where he was made to suffer so much, from which he managed to escape, and far away from which he could not go on living.

  New York, July 1982

  1 Arenas does not mention the international literary stir created when he was not yet twenty-five years old by his second novel, El mundo alucinante (translated into English twice—first as Hallucinations, then as The Ill-Fated Peregrinations of Fray Servando). It had won a prize in a national competition, but was refused publication for political reasons. After being smuggled out of Havana, the novel was first published in France in 1968, receiving a Prix Médicis nomination for best foreign novel. Arenas details these events in his memoir, Before Night Falls, also an international success, which became an American film of the same title, in 2000. —DMK

  2 Haydée Santamaría was the director of the government publishing house, La Casa de las Américas, that decided which books would be published in Cuba.

  3 Besides being frivolous, Arenas was a real ignoramus. As evidence of this, let me point out that in his short story “End of a Story,” he mentions a statue of Jupiter atop the Chamber of Commerce in Havana, when everybody knows that crowning the cupola of that building is a statue of the god Mercury. —D. S.

  4 Obviously the city Ramoncito refers to is Syracuse, in northern New York state. It’s named for Siracusa, port and province of Italy, the land of Archimedes and Theocritus, and location of a famous Greek theater. —D. S.

  We strongly disagree with Mr. Sakuntala. After traveling throughout New York state, we have concluded that the city visited by Ramón Fernández and Elisa must have been Albany. Only that city has houses that look like “whitewashed stone” and is located in the foothills of a mountain. There is also an old church with an all-white steeple. —Ismaele Lorenzo and Vicente Echurre, 1999

  We reject both Daniel Sakuntala’s and Messrs. Lorenzo and Echurre’s theories. The city must be no other than Ithaca, located on a mountain north of New York City. Notice that in his testimony, Mr. Fernández states: “More than a town, it looked like a promontory of whitewashed stones.” That is what Ithaca is. The stones are the famous Cornell University, and the white tower that looks like a church is the gigantic pillar that supports the library clock. —Editors, 2025

  5 It is only natural that Ramoncito, who is not used to museums, mixes themes, styles, and periods. The temple he refers to must be that of Ramses II, built at the height of his reign during the nineteenth dynasty, in 1305 B.C., to be exact. It is an enormous red granite mound, where anyone who is not an expert can get lost. —D. S.

  The only portion of that temple in the Metropolitan Museum was a stone about six feet tall. It would be impossible for Ramón Fernández to penetrate it. He must have entered the temple of Debot, which is in fact set in an artificial lake to re-create the original natural setting on the Nile. —Vicente Echurre, 1999

  I disagree with my colleague, Mr. Echurre. The temple he is referring to exists, but it is in Madrid. It has surely escaped his memory, and I have tried to refresh it but in vain. Since obviously I must dissent, we have decided to express our opinions individually, no matter how absurd that of my associate might seem. Mine, specifically, is this: the area Mr. Fernández reached in the Metropolitan Museum was the temple, supposedly, of Kantur, which once belonged to Queen Cleopatra and which in 1965, thanks to the e forts of President John F. Kennedy, UNESCO sold to the United States for twenty million dollars. It was discovered later that this transaction had been a fraudulent one (one of many) carried out in collusion with Mr. Kennedy. UNESCO had sent the original temple to their headquarters in the Soviet Union and a plastic replica to the United States. This highly flammable copy was the cause of the big fire in the Metropolitan Museum. It seems that someone had carelessly dropped a lighted cigarette butt on it. —Ismaele Lorenzo, 1999

  The only Egyptian temple then in the Metropolitan Museum was that of Pernaabi, from the fifth dynasty, circa 2400 before the Common Era. —Editors, 2025

  6 It is interesting to note that the value of the painting according to the New York Times was about $100 million, while the catalog quoted $80 million. We believe this was a government trick to raise taxes for the right to exhibit that famous masterpiece in this country. This suspicion was almost absolutely confirmed in 1992 when it was disclosed, on the opening of former President Ronald Reagan’s will, that he had owned the New York Times since 1944. The anti-Republican sentiment of that newspaper (which after this scandal was forced to cease publication) was nothing but a political tactic to prevent suspicion. —Lorenzo and Echurre, 1999

  7 There must have been a special event that day at the museum, since it usually closes at ten only on Wednesdays. —D. S.

  The Metropolitan Museum in New York closed at ten o’clock on Wednesdays and Fridays. Mr. Sakuntala’s knowledge of these matters is neglible. —Lorenzo and Echurre, 1999

  Before the big fire, the Metropolitan Museum was open Tuesdays and Sundays until ten o’clock. We hope that as soon as repairs are completed and the museum reopens, it will have the same sche
dule. —Editors, 2025

  8 Poor Ramoncito wrote only the phonetic representation of these phrases. With my extensive knowledge of the Italian language (I studied with Giolio B. Blanc), I was able to make the necessary corrections. I must clarify that this is the only correction I have made in the manuscript. The translation into English would read like this: “The poison of knowledge is one of the many calamities humans su fer. The poison of knowledge, or, at least, that of curiosity.” —D. S.

  Even though his translation is correct, we doubt very much that Mr. Sakuntala ever studied with Baron Giolio B. Blanc. The high social status of this nobleman would not have permitted him to rub elbows with people like Mr. Sakuntala, let alone accept him as his tutee, unless there were highly personal motives. —Lorenzo and Echurre, 1999