Reinaldo put the finishing touches on the story of Coco Salas’ belt and smiled; then he lay back once more, his head on the manuscript that lay atop his swim fins. Skunk in a Funk gave a quick look down the wooden bridge she was sunning on, writing on, resting on, and cruising on, and took an inventory of the more than a hundred fairies that had gaggled together on it. Over there were the Three Weird Sisters knitting endless pullovers, underwear, and bathing suits with which they attempted to seduce the beachgoers. And a little farther on were Miguel Barniz showing off his misshapen body and César Lapa, the Mulatto of Fire, making those grotesque gestures that she thought were divine. Making up the predictable coven over that way were the Duchess, Sanjuro, La Reine des Araignées, Uglíssima, and SuperSatanic talking about Carita Montiel’s last movie, which they’d just seen. Poor creatures, thought Skunk in a Funk, they think that old movie from the seventies is le dernier cri—why, I bet they don’t even know that Carita’s dead, I think at the age of a hundred and twelve. In a little corner of the bridge the Dowager Duchess de Valero was chatting with Teodoro Tampon, Clara Mortera, SuperChelo, and Carlitos Olivares, the Most In-Your-Face Queen in Cuba (a title he wore on his wing, I mean sleeve). In another nook, somewhat removed from the rest—oh dear!—the Ogress was exposing her scabs and bulges to the sun. And way over there were Tomasito the Goya-Girl, the Brontë Sisters, the cunning Mahoma, and the Siamísima Twins Brielíssima and Singadíssima, joined at the navel. At that horrid sight, Skunk in a Funk (who wanted to go on thinking about her novel, not get involved in stupid chatter) hid her face in her arms and rested, her head on the manuscript of her novel and her beloved swim fins. The fierce sun of summer made her drowsy. When she awoke, an angel was hovering before her eyes. It was a gorgeous boy, of harmonious hunklike proportions, with curly yellow hair and sweet nostalgic eyes and a towel over his shoulder. It was (dare I say it?) Lisa’s Tatica, the White Angel of Marianao. So lovely was this teenage creature that no one could tell by looking at him, not even those few people who knew him, that he was a common (and common, my dear) thief. That’s how such a chaste and angelic myth had been able to grow up around him—he didn’t look like the thug he was. The dreamboat gazed at Skunk in a Funk so tenderly that she simply had to sit up on the edge of the bridge and say hello. How’s it going, Skunk in a Funk said to him, trying to control her nervousness at being in the presence of such a vision of delight. Kinda boring, said Cinderella’s Prince, the only interesting kid around here is you, the rest of ’em just chatter away. Omigod! The Fair-Haired Child had called Skunk in a Funk, that hunchbacked old thing, a kid! And Skunk in a Funk fell for it. Oh yes, she was a kid, a guy, a young hunk who could still run up the Mount of the Cross without getting winded, the way she’d done thirty years ago. But Gabriel, out of the past, rushed to Skunk in a Funk’s rescue. He made her see herself the way she was now—an old queen lying spread-eagled on a bridge at Patrice Lumumba Beach, looking glassy-eyed and openmouthed at the beckoning bulge that bulged for what seemed like miles in the almost transparent bathing suit of a common criminal. Oh, but the common criminal had scooted a little closer to Skunk in a Funk, and while he stretched his lovely legs, brushing Skunk in a Funk’s legs as he did so, his voice grew ever more intimate. Nobody knows how lonely I feel, the thieving angel murmured, it’s so hard to find anybody you feel like you can talk to. . . . I wish I had a friend, a real friend, somebody that didn’t just want to go to bed with me. . . . Don’t pay any attention! Reinaldo shouted at Skunk in a Funk from somewhere deep inside Skunk in a Funk herself. Don’t be an idiot, just keep working on our novel! . . . But the diabolical angel, with his increasingly angelic smile, asked Skunk in a Funk if he could stay there a while, next to her. No! shouted Gabriel from Holguín. Tell him you’re not buying any of this bullshit, Reinaldo whispered from down inside. Of course you can stay here, Skunk in a Funk replied. It’s a free country. Thanks, answered the angel, who stretched out facedown (the whole hunky length of him) alongside Skunk in a Funk. Look at him there, all gold and honey, life force radiating forth from him like a beacon, bubbling forth like a fountain of youth before your bulging eyes. He’s dozed off. He’s closed his eyes and dozed off, safe in the assurance that you will watch over his sleep and guard his lovely white towel. His lo-o-ong eyelashes have fluttered closed like the wings of some fantastic bird. And the queen watches over the sleep of the Golden Prince, and naturally she makes sure nobody runs off with his towel, she protects him from the thuggish looks and vulgar pawings of Peerless Gorialdo and the notorious chickenhawks of Arroyo Naranjo, who pass dangerously close to the towel several times. Oh, she is the Fairy Guardmother watching over the Angel’s sleep, property, and life—that snow-white angel who had so innocently trusted in her, the monstrous Skunk in a Funk. She saw it now—reality contradicted what she herself had written about this man-child. How could such a sweet teenager be bad—he was Goodness itself, that’s what he was, a poor misunderstood kid, a jewel in the rough, perhaps a great poet in a mud puddle. The angel slept for more than an hour under Skunk in a Funk’s watchful eye. By the time he woke up, Skunk in a Funk had already planned how she would invite him up to her room, over there, near the beach; they would talk like real friends, none of that wanna-do-it stuff. She and the Golden Boy would traverse the trash heap of life together; they would do battle together against the world. She would defend her Prince against the terrible chickenhawks that wanted to rape him, against the queens that wanted to swallow him whole. No one would harm her Angel; she would take care of him. Maybe—why not?—in a gesture of brotherhood she would kiss his balls once in a while. Uh-huh, but that was all, that was all, and then she would rock him to sleep. Oh, maybe, if the man-child absolutely insisted, she would kiss his prick. Uh-huh, but that was all, that was all. All right, maybe, when the poor creature couldn’t bear the suffering of the world any longer, she would lie down beside him, kiss him ever so delicately, and allow herself to be ravaged by the Boy-Prince, to prove to him that he was not alone in the world. Uh-huh, she might do that, but that was all, that was all. Other times, giving in to the constant pleadings of the Princely Hunk, she would rear back, rock back against him as fast as she could and be skewered by the child, and they would live that way, forming a single harmony of coupling, for year after year. Uh-huh, but that was all. . . . Adaze in these erotico-domestic meditations was Skunk in a Funk when the Golden Boy, springing up so fast she couldn’t figure out what was happening, pulled on her brand-new swim fins and dived into the water, vanishing as if by magic. Skunk in a Funk, unable to conceive that the Child of Glory, whom she had just been so tenderly watching over, was capable of such a thing, looked out at the ocean expecting to see the young man leap out of the water and return to her side. But Tatica, swimming underwater, was not coming back; he was swimming away (with the swim fins) as fast as he could swim. When Skunk in a Funk came to her senses, she realized that she was sitting all by herself on the wooden bridge at Patrice Lumumba Beach beside the only thing the Golden Boy had left her to remember him by—an old, holey, shit-covered towel. Skunk in a Funk looked around and saw all the fairies and queens that she knew so well—her natural enemies—making sarcastic remarks; some were falling on the ground, they found it all so hilarious. All of them were laughing at the queen who had just been made a fool of. . . . But even if it was too late to save the swim fins, it wasn’t too late to save some face. And so Skunk in a Funk stood up on the bridge and called out to Tatica as though he were swimming along underwater right there underneath the bridge—Tatica, honey, I’m tired, I’ll wait for you in my room. I’ll take your towel so these thieves all over the place won’t steal it. . . . And with the graceful and self-assured air of a true lady, and carrying the shit-stained towel as though it were the scepter of a real-life queen, Skunk in a Funk made her way through the cackling and camping and retired from the beach. But oh, my dear, when she stepped off Patrice Lumumba Beach, she realized that she had forgotten the manuscript of her novel—she’d left
it on the bridge. Reinaldo ran like the wind back to the beach. There were the other faggots, laughing like hyenas, but the manuscript was nowhere to be seen. How could he question those pansies, it would be so humiliating. Besides—if they had taken the novel it was only logical to think that they wouldn’t give it back to him. Gabriel looked desperately down into the water under the bridge, expecting to see pages of the manuscript floating there, because there hadn’t been time for it to sink entirely. But not the slightest sign of it. So Skunk in a Funk arrived at the unfair conclusion that that evil Tatica himself, out of sheer innate malignity, had stolen her novel, too, just to spite her. . . . But she couldn’t show her dejection in front of this pack of cackling fairies that were watching her consternation from the bridge, fluttering their wings and feathers. Even Oscar was frenziedly beating his huge beat-up wings, like some great vampire bat. And so, screwing up her courage, and putting her best face forward, and smiling like the trouper that she was, Skunk in a Funk walked over to the railing and called out to Tatica once more as though the Golden Boy were right there, swimming among the piles of the bridge: Oh, and thanks for remembering to throw out the paper I was writing on, the way I asked you to. I was telling the story of all my friends, and it could have done a good deal of damage. Thanks for being so understanding, sweetheart. . . . And even more regally than before, Skunk in a Funk walked off the bridge and off the beach.
But when she came to her room, a former maid’s room that she rented from her Aunt Orfelina (the She-Devil), Reinaldo couldn’t stand it any more, and giving a terrible cry of pain he began to bang his head against the wall. He banged the wall so hard that his Aunt Orfelina (the She-Devil), thinking that her nephew was having another one of his orgies, dialed the special number that Fifo had given her and was promoted on the spot to Stool Pigeon First Class.
In the end, Reinaldo grew more quiet. He sat down at the typewriter that he’d screwed to the table so that nobody could steal it, and he began to write, once more, the story of his novel.
THE STORY
This is the story of an island trapped within a sinister tradition, the victim of every conceivable political catastrophe, every kind of blackmail, every sort of bribery, every grandiloquent speech, every false promise ever made, and hunger that seems to have no end. This is the story of an island wearied and worn away by confidence games, the noise of bluster and braggadocio, five hundred years of violence and crimes. This is the story of a people that has always lived for grand illusions, glorious dreams, and has always suffered the most cruel disappointments—a people that has had to learn to humble itself, humiliate itself, betray itself in order to survive. This is the story of a people that intones anthems in praise of the tyrant by day and mutters prayers of rage and hatred of him by night—a people that bends over and scrabbles at the earth by day, planting yautías, pangola grass, nettles, California apples, ersatz coffee, and anything else the tyrant can think of, and by night gnaws away at the undersea rock that holds up the island ruled singlehandedly by that tyrant. This is the story of an island that has never known peace; that was discovered by a boatload of thieves, adventurers, ex-prisoners, and murderers; that was colonized by a gang of thieves and murderers; that was governed by a pack of thieves and murderers—and that finally (after so many petty thieves and murderers) fell into the hands of Fifo, the supreme thief, the Summa of our most glorious murderous tradition. This is the story of an island turned first into a huge colonial plantation, then into the world’s whorehouse, and now into a perfect and unanimous prison—an island in which the authorities talk about prosperity while they deposit in offshore banks all the treasure that they’ve stolen, an island in which the people are stabbed to death as they dance. This is the story of an island whose discoverer, while declaring it the most beautiful island in the world, at the same time was making plans to destroy it. This is the story of an island where only the most servile and mediocre have succeeded—an island subjected to infinite summer heat, infinite tyranny, and the unanimous flight of its inhabitants, who while applauding the wonders of the island think only of ways to flee it. This is the story of an island which is spangled in the tinsel of official rhetoric while, underneath, it tears at its own skin and lays its hopes in the final holocaust.
A TONGUE TWISTER (6)
Man and woman, once warp and woof woven into human weft, oft warred. One half of weft, womb, woman, was worn by work of giving birth, oft to words, however wondrous sprung, and wanted rest; one half, worthy though oft wordless, was restless, wept for unspoken yearnings, would wound.
Woolf, wishing to give words to work of birth, to wounds, to man-woman war, but adrift in words unable to be sung, one day finds harbor.
Woolf moored, war won, words sung, wondrous armistice engendered, Woolfian splendor: Orlando.
The Color of Summer: or The New Garden of Earthly Delights Page 22