FIFO:
Who can you mean, eh?
RAÚL:
José Lezama Lima!
The MALECÓNdarkens and the lights come up on KEY WEST. Delfín Proust and Endinio Valliegas swim in to shore. Immediately, everyone abandons Odiseo Ruego and Angel Gastaluz and runs over to see the new arrivals.
A JOURNALIST:
These two, you know, are the real thing, you betcha.
Not like those two Orígenes poets that were dragged in on a stretcher.
DELFÍN:
What?! I thought they rode in on sharks’ backs.
That’s why I braved this old queen’s attacks.
A shark’s the only man or animal that brings me to climax.
THE JOURNALIST:
Yeah, you’re right, sharks’ backs, you betcha.
Which of course brought them under our suspicion.
But they collapsed from malnutrition,
and that explains the stretcher.
A LADY IN JEWELS:
That arrival does lend itself to suspicion—
we all know the sharks are Fifo’s agents,
so they should have come in on sea serpents
if they expected us to trust them.
DELFÍN:
And Avellaneda—what will be her reception?
Will she be under suspicion?
THE BEJEWELED LADY:
Oh, you know, we’ll do the usual—
We’ll make the standard fuss.
The problem is, we don’t know anything about her,
whether she’s one of Fifo’s spies or one of us.
A POLITICAL LEADER:
She’ll definitely be looked into. And we’ll thoroughly search her purse.
You can never be too careful. She might be carrying a bomb!
DELFÍN:
Heavens, before I subject my person or my purse
to these idiotic (and very rude!) inspections,
I’m going back where I came from!
Delfín jumps into the ocean and swims back to the Malecón, though notwithout first butting Avellaneda’s boat with his head—the boat bobbles uncontrollably. With the arrival of Delfín, the lights come up on the MALECÓN. Just then, the arrival of the poet José Lezama Lima is announced. Great air of expectancy. A squad of midgets comes on stage, bearing a huge stretcher on which there is a gigantic ball of a thing with what looks like a tablecloth draped over it. They set the enormous stretcher down on the wall of the Malecón. María Luisa Bautista gently tugs at the cloth, and from under it appears the poet Lezama Lima, who is dressed in a Greek toga-contraption. The poet gets to his feet with some difficulty and, still standing on the stretcher, begins his speech.
JOSÉ LEZAMA LIMA:
Oh, I fervently pray that you escape, since I could not, for dark Atropos, aided by the gondolier of watery footsteps who plied his pole to pull away from me before I could halt him by uttering his name, cut her skein and cut off my retreat.
Myriads of horrid Lestrigons, flesh-eating savages, swooped down upon me from a darkling plain—antelopes, serpents, pink fenestrations, phallic cornets, tiny elves making erotic signs, enchanted palanquins from Tibet—a monstrous dog (perhaps a whippet) swimming backward through the blood—and the tiara of the Helot zealot.
FIFO:
What the hell is he talking about? Who on earth is this idiot!?
LEZAMA: (unfazed)
I suckle, errant marshy mallow,
blind, thy nectarous drops in clots.
Marmots, marmots, marmots,
marmots marmots from far Tibet, oh-ho.
I shall not hunt the heron, nor the thrush,
nor even the magnificent wild boar
whose carnal plow
assails me with an anal rush
and makes me yearn for more.
Cats upon cats—both he and she—
and gold-plated toenail clippers,
all of that I see,
plus Old Rosa’s slippers—
that goat-herding hag with carbuncles,
the witch of Perronales,
a place where, when Persephone
returns from underground,
septentrional storms beat down.
A magic spell, the wind plants a lighthouse upon the beach.
A trick employed by cunning Euridice
to snare succulent mameys.
Canines of accursèd flames.
Aberrant contortions.
The lemon tree, the almond tree,
and swarms and swarms of hornets.
O faun of poultry farms, slip nude I beg
into my marmoreal bed
with stealthy night-snail tread.
The rings of Uranus—or is it Saturn?—
for your sweet arrival burn,
for you shall cunningly dive, ah-ha!,
into the repertoire of my saliva.
O glorious grace-filled secular world,
O faun that plays upon my toconema curled
making it stir and rise at thy embrace—
O bed-meadow infused with sacred grace!
The deeper the digging, the more treasure,
the deeper the hole, the greater the pleasure,
O buried Pharaoh of blind eye.
The slippery attack,
like a mule’s kick,
fitting rings to finger—
ring after ring, kick after kick—
this is a humdinger!
FIFO:
Somebody shut up that prick!
And in the ocean fling him!
Soldiers and midgets, carrying long sticks, roll Lezama along the Malecón down to the seaside, to the sound of tremendous noise and shouting.
LEZAMA: (as he rolls down to the sea)
This plunge into the depths shall be my epiphany;
I greet my descent like proud Antigone.
But wait a moment—tell me, can ya?—
is it true that my friend Rodrigo de Triana
has given up on sodomy?
He falls into the water, causing the tide to rise so high that it floats the Malecón—and swamps Avellaneda’s boat.
AVELLANEDA: (bobbing about in the waves)
Sea—
for the world,
profound
consolation.
I think I’ll fly.
Perhaps in the sky
I shall find
liberation.
FIFO: (to Paula Amanda)
So you recommended this clown, huh?
And then he practically drowns us!
This time, Paula, you’ve really fucked up!
RAÚL:
And with all these expenses, we’re going to be bankrupt!
FIFO:
You’d better think of something fast!
PAULA AMANDA: (desperate)
I promise I’ll get someone more suitable,
someone who’ll be truly memorable
and utterly without parallel.
FIFO:
Such as?
PAULA AMANDA:
I know! Julián del Casal!
Paula Amanda and other police officers compel Horcayés to immediately bring Casal back to life. The poet rises on the wall of the Malecón in a worn and faded nineteenth-century suit.
JULIÁN DEL CASAL: (looking out to sea where Avellaneda is in full flight)
I am filled with a longing to commit suicide,
and therefore I applaud your own suicidal flight.
I, too, sigh for those distant realms
whose skies are filled with halcyons,
gliding over the blue ocean.
A paradise—that is what I want to live in;
a paradise of centurions
beckoning
me to blow jobs.
FIFO: (enraged)
What! Call out the firing squads!
No—better make it cannons!
While the artillery prepares its cannons, Casal goes on with his poem.
CASAL:
To see a
different sky, a different sun a-rising,
a different beach, and different horizons
where, singing like a mockingbird,
before a squad of men with vibrating erections
I can hover like a hummingbird
and sip at their sweet nectar.
FIFO:
Ready, aim—and fa-a-ahr!
CASAL: (with the cannons trained on him)
Oh, if I, like you, should seek exile
far from this isle of crocodiles,
no place would make me cheerier
than exotic, warm Algeria,
where a hundred—no, a thousand—studly men
would await me in their palaces
(all ruddy and golden)
with their phalluses
emboldened.
FIFO:
Not another word, d’you hear!
CASAL: (as fast as he can talk)
Yes—Algiers!
That would be my intention.
Where every man’s bisexual or queer
and his prick’s at attention.
Fifo’s troops open fire, killing Casal and seriously damaging Avellaneda’s dinghy—she loses her oars.
AVELLANEDA:
Oh, dear, my boat is shipping water! Help!
O Cepeda, O Fonseca, O dear Gabriel,
O Quintana, O Zorrilla,
O Camilo José Cela,
quick—launch the Coast Guard’s best flotilla!
Sound the alarm! Two-whee! Too-whoo!
Hurry, my brothers! To the rescue!
While Avellaneda barely manages to stay afloat, in KEY WESTa heated argument breaks out about the numbers in a survey that a big U.S. company has taken in an attempt to assess Fifo’s popularity, which scholars claim is on the rise.
A MAYOR:
The press, on good authority, has said
that Fifo’s brought back from the dead
all sorts of famous men and women—
Julián del Casal, José Lezama Lima—
all sorts of poets and poetesses
for his big event.
Which means, damn it, it’s been a huge success.
CHORUS:
Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!
A POETESS:
It’s really sinister, the press.
Infiltrated by evil Fifo’s spies,
and always ready to print lies—
It’s just not right!
CHORUS:
Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!
THE PRESIDENT OF A CUBAN MUSEUM:
And who bears the burden of this plight?
We do—and I say we ought to fight!
CHORUS:
Right! Right! Right! Right!
A SCHOLAR:
Yes, it’s a deplorable situation,
so let’s give them some of their own medicine.
Let’s have our own resurrection,
bring back somebody that’ll get people’s attention.
I know—we’ll call Alta Grave de Peralta, see?
and resurrect José Martí.
CHORUS:
Sí! Sí! Sí! Sí!
Tremendous tension in Key West. Alta Grave de Peralta appears with her gigantic plastic egg that she is still throwing up in the air, spotlights trained on it. The egg keeps rising, higher and higher. The giant movie screen drops down and on it we see Zebro Sardoya.
ZEBRO SARDOYA:
In just a few seconds, ladies and gentlemen,
from that egg up there you are going to see
Cuba’s greatest poet descend—
The one, the only—José Martí!
The egg keeps rising.
ZEBRO SARDOYA: (on the screen)
It looks like it’s not coming down . . .
ALTA GRAVE DE PERALTA:
Drat! You’ll have to shoot it down!
The sheriff of Key West pulls out a .45 and fires at the egg, which splits into two halves. It’s empty. Meanwhile, out of the crowd (where he was lurking) comes José Martí, riding a stick horse and carrying an odd sort of suitcase or briefcase of some kind.
A POETESS LAUREATE:
There he is! Over there! José Martí!
CHORUS:
Sí! Sí! Sí! Sí!
Martí rides his stick horse through the crowd, which falls silent, and throws himself into the sea. He rides out to Avellaneda.
AVELLANEDA: (to Martí)
O dear god, help me!
I am sinking into the sea!
Perhaps if we work together
we can save each other.
MARTÍ:
No way!
For my fate
is to ride on horseback.
AVELLANEDA:
Then woe is me,
for then my fate
is to die a shipwreck.
MARTÍ:
No doubt—your boat is very rickety.
AVELLANEDA:
Have mercy! Give me a hand.
Don’t leave me—I need a man,
and I am not persnickety.
(Martí makes no effort to help.)
You will not help?
That is very bad!
Are you truly such a cad?
I beg you, tell me what your name is
so I may discover whose the blame is
for my eminent—I mean imminent—demise.
MARTÍ:
My name is José Martí.
AVELLANEDA:
Oh, so you’re José Martí.
I have read your poetry,
and I confess
I am impressed.
But I cannot pardon you
for preferring Zambrana
to me.
MARTÍ:
You and I are two ships passing in the night;
I will not tarry for some trivial, purely literary fight.
You embarked to flee—or search for—power,
while I am on a journey to a star.
AVELLANEDA:
A star? Some tacky star? Who is she?
What’s her name, Martí?
I confess to pangs of jealousy.
MARTÍ:
Her name, Avellaneda, is liberty—
Miss Liberty.
And she’s no woman, she is destiny
and every honorable person’s duty.
AVELLANEDA:
But you would abandon a land of liberty
to go in search of abstract Liberty?
I think your arguments are thin.
I’m not convinced; I say cherchez la femme.
MARTÍ:
You certainly know how to exasperate a man . . .
Look, I’m leaving because I don’t feel right here,
because I hate how people live their lives here.
Money is all anybody cares about,
and that is not what I think life’s about.
Here, all’s filthy lucre, mercantilism.
I long for something higher—idealism.
I want things that money cannot buy.
I’m leaving because I miss the Island’s sun and sky;
I want to lie under a guásima tree,
let the boughs of a jubabán rock me—
I want to be, or at least try to be,
what I truly am—a Cuban,
a man of the Caribbean.
Look—up here for months you almost freeze to death
and I’m dying of loneliness, dying of homesickness.
I want to fight for that thing that is mine.
For me, no more the exile’s bitter bread,
no more sleepless nights in exile’s bed.
I do not know if you can understand me.
The Color of Summer: or The New Garden of Earthly Delights Page 8