The Color of Summer: or The New Garden of Earthly Delights

by Reinaldo Arenas

  Dressed in his olive-green uniform and flanked by his gorgeous security forces, Fifo triumphantly gave the order for the party to begin. At that, the Armed Forces Orchestra played the Fifonian National Anthem, which all stood to hear, hands over hearts as the midgets had instructed, and then the national anthems of every country of the world. Fifo wanted to be sure to please all his honored guests—who would be enjoying not only the fabulous dinner and the exquisite wines and other liquors that not even kings and queens could taste any longer, but also (as the invitation had promised) “rare and edifying spectacles.” Among the events announced for that night was a superskewering, one canonization and two decanonizations, a crucifuckingfixion, a self-decapitation, five hundred strangulations performed by five hundred expert midgets, twenty-seven resurrections of famous people, a striptease performed by the chief executioner of Teheran, a Russian-roulette duel between the mayor of Boston and Tomasito the Goya-Girl, Giselle danced by Halisia Jalonzo, a Grand Oneirical Theological Political Philosophical Satirical Conference whose subjects were god, the devil, madness, dreams, paradise, hell, Florentine art, the steam engine, and the categories of queenhood, among other fascinating topics. The speakers were to be Delfín Proust, the Archbishop of Canterbury, José Lezama Lima, the Divinely Malign, André Breton, Salman Rushdie, Skunk in a Funk, the Queen of Holland, the AntiChelo, SuperSatanic, and several winners of the Nobel Prize (among others). The program was then to continue with a second retractation by H. Puntilla, the official introduction of Bloodthirsty Shark, an excursion to the Garden of Computers, and a walking tour through Old Havana under the guidance of Alejo Sholekhov. . . . It was a fascinating program. And in the middle of the opening ceremonies, his ears deafened by the acclamations of his guests and the noise of the orchestra, stood Fifo, olive-greener and more beaming by the minute, personally seeing that the evening’s activities went off without a hitch. Only the Marquesa de Macondo dared interrupt him; unable to contain herself, she fell to her knees before the high commander and fleetingly brushed his ball-sack with her lips. Many, including Arturo Lumski, feared that this irreverence would cost the Marquesa her life, but Fifo, smiling, slapped her head away and continued his hostess-with-the-mostest duties without missing a beat.

  THE LOCK QUEEN

  That fish is dinner, said Chug-a-Lug to herself when she saw the Angel of Marianao emerge from the ocean. And with great self-possession, poise, and aplomb she signaled the golden young carp to come over. Chug-a-Lug knew that after a young thug had perpetrated a few offenses, he needed to show his noble side; she also knew (since she knew almost everything) that if that young thug had been mugging queens, and had even taken the poor Ogress’s life, what he needed now was a queen with whom to expiate his crimes. And that queen was she, Chug-a-Lug. That was why, without further ado, she told Tatica that she had a room in Miramar and would be delighted if he’d spend a little time there with her; maybe they could even listen to a few Beatles albums. Tatica said OK, and his bathing suit immediately stood up a little, giving very promising signs.

  Here, we pause for a background break: Chug-a-Lug was a fairy who was very accomplished at picking up young thieves, hoodlums, that sort of trade, and bringing them home to her room. And since she knew that all fairies were constantly exposed to the risk of being robbed, even by their most faithful lover-boy, she had taken the precaution of safeguarding all her belongings behind three, four, or as many as ten locks. Her refrigerator (a gift from Fernández Mell) was built into the wall and locked behind a double iron gate secured with three Yale locks (the gift of Ramiro Valdéz); her television set (a gift from Joaquín Ordoquí back when he was flush) was also chained and locked and built into the wall and protected by shatterproof glass (a gift from Papito Serguera); her Tiffany lamps (gifts from Raúl Roa) were enclosed in metal cages, and each cage was protected by seven locks. Even the toilet seat was under lock and key inside a metal cage, as was the record-player. As for the bed and the rocking chair (cunningly placed just at the foot of the bed), they were completely encircled by a thick chain which in turn was chained and padlocked by countless unpickable padlocks to a thick iron bar set into the wall. All of this gave Chug-a-Lug a certain sense of security—for a while. Because after hearing about the robberies committed against Tomasito the Goya-Girl, Coco Salas, and thousands of other fairies exactly like herself, Chug-a-Lug centupled the locks in her room and put a dozen new locks on the door to the stairwell, another dozen on the door at the bottom of the stairs, and more than two dozen on the door to the hall that led (on the other side of an interior patio) to the street door (on which she put a hundred locks)—and that whole hallway, between the patio and the street, she filled with iron gates, and on every gate she put at least twenty locks. . . .

  And now we return to our story:

  Staggering under the key ring weighing more than fifty pounds that she had to carry around with her in her backpack night and day, Chug-a-Lug was leading Tatica toward her top-security love nest. But it wasn’t easy to get from Santa Fe to her room in La Puntilla. Not easy at all. First, fairy and golden boy took a number 91 bus that had a blowout; then the fairy, figuring what the hell, hailed a cab, whose engine exploded—either from the heat of the tropics or from the heat that came all over the pansy Chug-a-Lug when she contemplated the enormous bulge that continued to grow in Tatica’s bathing suit. So then they thumbed a ride on a truck loaded with volunteer workers, but when Chug-a-Lug climbed on board with that hundred-pound key ring, the truck lost its balance, zigzagged all over the highway, and finally crashed into a telephone pole, killing six female workers-emerita. So chickenhawk and chicken started walking, but Chug-a-Lug soon felt her strength flagging—there was no way she could walk so many miles with that many keys in her backpack. At that, Golden Boy suggested that they swim; he’d tow her with those excellent swim fins he’d stolen from Skunk in a Funk. And so Chug-a-Lug threw her thousand-pound backpack over her shoulder again—yes, a thousand pounds, or wait a minute, I mean a thousand keys. No way—it was a thousand and seven, I counted them myself, every one. . . . All right, Mary, have it your way, a thousand and seven. . . . Anyway, she threw the backpack with the thousand and seven keys in it over her back and was towed by the Golden Child (who swam at fantastic speed) to the beach of La Puntilla. What a trip, my dear, riding the sweet golden dream king who was later going to impale her on his sweet golden scepter. I must confess that even Bloodthirsty Shark, who was observing all this from afar, felt a certain envy—we aren’t sure whether envy of the Golden Boy or Chug-a-Lug, who was not much past the twink stage herself.

  At last, Fairy and Marianao Angel reached their destination. Tatica was exhibiting signs of an urgency that was not to be denied, much less postponed. Indeed, as Antón Arrufada had written more than sixty years ago, “all appeared to feign hopefulness.” That delicious piece of chicken with that big delicious piece of white meat begged only to be eaten; his only desire seemed to be to get to that bed and have his way with Chug-a-Lug. Ay, but when, after their odyssey, they came to the door of Chug-a-Lug’s room, it wasn’t so easy to get in. The fairy took out her gigantic key ring and began to open and close locks. Very slowly open and close locks, because she got more nervous and desperate by the minute and Tatica was getting hotter by the second. Every time she looked over at that fabulous bulge she got the wrong key in the wrong lock, and sometimes it took her half an hour to unlock a single lock. Finally, by the time she’d opened and closed those thousand (sorry, thousand and seven) locks, fifteen years had gone by. Chug-a-Lug was no longer a young fairy, she was an old, slack-skinned, bald, bony queen, and Tatica, who honestly wanted to screw the youthful Chug-a-Lug (not rob her), seeing that old thing standing before him, inviting him into her room, stepped back, vaulted all the gates and locks in a single bound, and ran full speed away. Chug-a-Lug, seeing herself in the mirror (which was cemented into the wall in her room), decided to take her own life. She would commit suicide by swallowing every key on her gigantic key r
ing. As she swallowed the keys one by one, she said a prayer of desperation to the patron saint and fairy godmother of all fairies, St. Nelly, asking her to find her a nice cool place in hell—or at least one that wasn’t too hot. But St. Nelly, who couldn’t bear to be around this particular pansy—much less in the other world, where she was living like a queen, thank you very much—decided to perform a miracle. At one swoop of her wing-claws she made time run backward, and suddenly the old queen Chug-a-Lug, looking at herself in the mirror cemented into her wall as she swallowed key number 328, saw that she was once more young and beautiful, so she leaped up and ran after Tatica, who had just left (if you remember), hornier than ever. But heavens, how was she going to get out of that cage she was in if most of the keys were in her stomach? The old queen with the keys inside her vaulted all the gates and locks, too. But by now the Golden Boy had been picked up by a high government muckety-muck type that lived in the house across the street—Leopoldo Avila, no less, the number one trade queen on the entire island. And so by the time the desperate Chug-a-Lug had reached the street, Lt. Avila was already guiding Golden Rod by his ever more prominent rod into his magnificent muckety-muck mansion. Chug-a-Lug gave a scream of fury and vomited up all the keys she still had in her stomach, all over the street.

  While a hail of keys fell across the asphalt, from the mansion came the unmistakable sounds of the lieutenant’s cries of pleasure and Tatica’s moans of satisfaction.

  A TONGUE TWISTER (8)

  Committing himself to conceding a consignment consisting of a cornucopia chockful of commodities—condoms and condiments, a considerable quantity of cuticle cutters, a crate of Cocoa Pops, a carload of khakis, a tube of Colgate anticavity, and a cardboard box containing captured mosquitoes—cock-crazed Coco talked a cocky ex-con into a quickie.

  Coco’s quickies cost him carloads of commodities.

  What quantities of commodities do Coco’s quickies cost him?

  For Coco Salas

  NOUVEAUX PENSÉES DE PASCAL,

  OU PENSÉES D’ENFER

  If you don’t want your son to be unhappy, kill him at birth.

  If you don’t want to be responsible for your son’s unhappiness, kill yourself. You are the one to blame.

  Avoid at all costs dying with your conscience burdened by the fact that you never killed anyone: You will not enter the kingdom of heaven or any other kingdom.

  Suffering degrades us; pleasure corrupts us. Poverty makes us criminals; money makes us murderers.

  A man may pardon another man almost anything except greatness.

  The greatest honor to which a hero should aspire is that his country detest him. It is an honor that he will attain.

  The coward will allow no man to defend him; the wretched man will forgive no man who defends him.

  Society condemns a man not for his defects but for his virtues.

  Men should not buy but rent.

  Never ask that people love you; ask that they please you. That is much harder, and the only thing that’s worth asking for.

  It is much easier to love men than to please them; that’s why there are more prophets and fewer pimps every day.

  Friends are more dangerous than enemies because they can get closer to you.

  When you see your neighbor’s beard on fire, pour on more fuel.

  It’s an ill wind that blows nobody ill. In front of every silver lining there’s a cloud. No good deed goes unpunished.

  Always remember that your best friend may be the most accomplished snitch.

  The only great public encounters occur (or used to occur) in public men’s rooms.

  There have never been any guardian angels, just guards.

  Eyes are the mirror not of the soul but of the liver.

  The soul dies before the body.

  And he said, “I’m going to be good,” and he felt great fear.

  A person who loves life too greatly cannot live long.

  Speak well of your enemy, so that you may do him the greatest harm possible.

  Do evil—and let it not matter to whom—because whomever you do evil to, you are doing someone a favor.

  Why spend so much energy trying to prove the existence of God if God has never taken the trouble to do so?

  Don’t fight an enemy with his own weapons; use weapons that are even more terrible.

  A macho has such a high opinion of masculinity that his greatest pleasure would be taking it up the ass from another man.

  From our inhibitions arise repressive law, communism, Christian morality, and bourgeois customs.

  True intellectuals are too intelligent to believe, too intelligent to doubt, but wise enough to deny. That is why great intelligence comes at last not to power but to prison.

  By this late date in our history, being right-wing or left-wing is just a strategy.

  The only way to be free is to be left alone—but even that is not enough; one must be alone.

  Only great disasters make us feel that we belong to a community. The brotherhood of men is grounded upon catastrophe.

  Every day we learn something new, but we never put it into practice.

  Men live only to feed their vanity; that is why they are used so easily, especially by the powerful and the cunning.

  Modern man is not even faithful to one evil; he needs to take part in several so as to betray all.

  The first person a dictator should keep his eye on is the hangman.

  A concert is a pretext for every tubercular old woman in the city to come to the concert hall to cough.

  Nothing is as perverse as freedom; those who have it can’t stand it, and those who don’t have it kill each other for it.

  A good dictator extols freedom while destroying it, but democrats destroy it without extolling it.