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

by Reinaldo Arenas

  It is quite possible that Odoriferous Gunk’s paper, read by the queen of Holland, would have ended at this point, but we shall never know, for at this last word, “pleasure,” there leaped up, like a frog seeing a snake, La Reine des Araignées—none other than Delfín Proust—who spoke as follows:

  “What I don’t understand about this paper is why there’s such a fuss to make a distinction between a man and a faggot, when there is no doubt that every faggot is a man and no man is anything but a faggot. There are, ladies and gentlemen, four major categories into which all fairies or faggots or whatever you want to call them can be divided, and those four categories include all men. Listen, then, I beg you, to the Four Major Categories into Which All Fags Can Be Divided. And don’t forget, sir, that you are in one of these categories. Yes, you, whether you admit it or not. Reality is more compelling than your silly sanctimoniousness or your craven cowardice. So open your ears, and listen:

  “First Category: The Ringed Queen, also known as the Screaming Queen and the Menace to Society. This pansy scurries like a desperate mole, a blind spider snuffling about for a fly—a fly to unzip, my dear. Her most elemental concern is to find a phallus, and she is invariably about to faint or die—or go berserk from desperation. She does not sleep, and hardly eats. She leaves no corner, nook, vacant lot, beach, patch of underbrush, stairwell, or men’s room unexplored. She never encounters the object of her desire—or when she thinks she’s actually, finally found it she becomes even more desperate and rushes off in a new search.

  “This type of queen is so outrageous, and so disruptive, that the system installs a metal ring around her neck. The ring may be visible or invisible. Whenever politics, morality, or the economy leads the powers that be to feel that the Ringed Queen should be locked up in a work camp, the only thing the system’s security forces have to do is latch onto the ring with a hook. So this type of queen is easily rounded up and carted off. Once she’s in the concentration camp and she and her sister queens are all kabobbed together on a long metal skewer that passes through their rings, they’re made to plant potatoes, taro roots, and tomatoes; or to cut sugar cane, weeds, or hemp; or to do whatever other nasty work needs to be done.

  “Although they are constantly persecuted, their numbers continue to grow—to the extent that sometimes you can hear the sound of rings clanking as you walk down the street. A typical example of this type of queen is EACHURBOD. Here she is, although not in person as I would have wished:”

  (The huge movie screen behind the speakers’ table flickered to life, and on it the audience saw the image of Eachurbod, who indeed exhibited all the features that La Reine des Araignées [it takes one to know one!] had just listed.

  The screen then flickered dark again, and Delfín Proust [a.k.a. La Reine des Araignées] continued his enumeration:)

  “Second Category: The Common, or Simple, Queen. This type of faggot is committed to another common queen—his ‘partner,’ or ‘associate,’ or ‘friend,’ and sometimes even ‘significant other’—and they are often seen strolling through a pine grove chatting about their plans, or buying a pair of plastic flipflops, or taking a trip to Varadero. The common queen generally lives with her mother and goes to the movies every Friday to see The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. A clerk, a translator, a petty bureaucrat, this queen wears long-sleeved white shirts, sometimes with a tie. She does not dream about being screwed by some well-muscled hunk who might possibly, just possibly, be bi. Let us look at a typical specimen: this one’s name is Reynaldo Filippe, but it might just as well be Juan Pérez or Jesús Briel:”

  (The screen lighted up, and on it there appeared a black-and-white photograph of a queen about forty years old, her hair combed neatly and parted on one side, with thin lips and regular, rather impersonal features somewhat reminiscent of T. S. Eliot’s. But Delfín Proust made it clear that because she was so common, the name of this queen was unknown, and that what the audience was seeing was an example that might be seen almost anywhere. “It’s as though you were looking at a blank page,” La Reine des Araignées said, and the screen went black.)

  “In the Third Category we find The Closet Queen. This queen may be a lawyer, a professor of Marxism-Leninism, a militant in the Communist Youth, the director of a government office, a member of the Communist Party, or a regular attendee at masses in the Catholic Church. She might occasionally be the editor of a literary journal and make trips to Bulgaria or Mongolia. Of course the closet queen is a queen who absolutely denies being a queen. She’s a dying queen, because she can almost never live, almost never be herself to her fullest measure. She lives in terror, fearing that she’ll fall into some phallic trap. She wants nothing to do with other queens. She vegetates; she lives in a state of denial. But sometimes, unable to bear it any longer, she steps into the men’s room of a pilot brewery. There, back at the back, a black man with a beckoning prick pretends to be urinating. The closet queen can’t stand it. She has lived in abstinence for years, going to Lenin Park to stroll hand-in-hand with her daughters or meeting with the block Watchdog Committee, in which she’s an activist. The closet queen, all aquiver, approaches the gigantic phallus and puts out her index finger, right there next to where she’s wearing the wedding ring her wife gave her, that overpoweringly heavy bundle of sticks that she must carry throughout life—which is perhaps why she’s often called a faggot. The terrified closet queen touches the gleaming phallus, then grasps it in her hand, gives it a little squeeze, looks desperately all around, especially toward the door. Then, frantically, she kneels and sucks—but only for a few seconds, for she thinks she hears a noise, or footsteps. The closet queen quickly gets to her feet and takes off running through the pilot brewery, terrified that the black man will pull out a pistol and arrest her on the spot. She flees across the entire city and takes refuge in her house, with her wife and their daughters. That night she’ll ask her mother-in-law out for a pizza. . . . I beg you, my friends, look with pity and understanding upon the image of this poor, suffering—miserably suffering—queen:”

  (The screen lit up, and on it appeared the figure of Luis Marrano, director of the literary journal La Maceta de Cuba. This pitiful specimen was dressed in a coat and tie and wearing a green beret. Her appearance on the screen caused a certain amount of muttering and rustling among the audience, because clearly the editor of La Maceta was in the room. But this middle-level functionary quickly removed his olive-green beret and slipped off his jacket and tie and sat quietly in his shirtsleeves. The screen, fortunately, went dark immediately, and La Reine des Araignées went on talking:)

  “The Fourth and Last Major Category of Queens is the Queenly Queen. This is the only queen who lives the life of a queen, doesn’t hide the fact from anybody, holds prominent political posts, travels to capitalist countries, and has several cars and several drivers—whose well-oiled steering mechanisms she handles with real expertise! The queenly queen has something on everybody, and she is filled with unbounded malignity and an immense talent for opportunism. She has a past with ties to the most sordid and permanent powers. Immune to all setbacks, to all changes in the political winds, to all political and moral manipulation, she is, in and of herself, a state secret—or at least an enigma. Perhaps when she was young she had compromising relations with a head of state, the secretary-general of the United Nations, a king, or a dictator-for-life. Here is an example of the queenly queen.”

  The screen flickered to life once more, and on it there appeared one of Fifo’s ministers, Sr. Alfred Güevavara, who in real life just happened to be sitting on the official raft, right beside Fifo. This personage was a flabby, almost transparent-skinned, slant-eyed, big-cheeked, fat-jowled queen with a big double chin and an undisguisably bald head, so of course it was impossible for the audience not to recognize her. That explained the deafening whispers that ran from one side of the auditorium to the other.

  And to top it off, when the screen went dark, Delfín Proust, advancing across the platform toward the floating
audience, began to point out the queenly queens who were present for the Carnival, along with all the other types of queens who caught his eye.

  Oh, my god, Fifo couldn’t believe the tone that his own personal Oneirical Scientifical Theological Political Philosophical Satirical Conference was taking. If so far he had (grudgingly) tolerated it, it was to demonstrate to his guests his magnanimity and liberalism (although may of those attending the conference had been secretly sentenced to death by Fifo that very night), but when Delfín Proust, with that unparalleled cool of hers (and that unmitigated gall), started to point out virtually the entirety of Fifo’s General Staff and most of his bodyguards as queenly queens, he could stand it no longer, and he ordered his diligent midgets to take out the faggot before she could go any further.

  There was just one condition he put on the assassins: The faggot had to be stabbed, whether with a knife or other sharp object he didn’t care, but definitely stabbed, since using a pistol or other firearm in the middle of the conference would surely be considered an insult to the VIPs and heads of state, and might even wound somebody. And so, while the fairy hopped deliriously from raft to raft calling out the category of the queen that was aboard—queenly, ringed, common, closet—the midgets, clutching knives or other sharp-pointed weapons, pursued him, thrusting and jabbing at him and sometimes even throwing knives at him, though Delfín was hopping about so much that they never touched him. Of course, some of the knives and other sharp instruments did puncture the rafts, sinking them and their passengers on the instant. Meanwhile, the pursued queen, leaping like a frog princess, continued to elude the menacing blades of the diligent midgets by hopping from flotation device to flotation device (never failing to point out the fairy who was sitting in it). But just as she was about to be overtaken, just as the knives and other sharp instruments were flying through the air like a rain of arrows, Delfín Proust lifted the skin of his face (which turned out to be a mask) to reveal to the audience what seemed to be her true visage: that of none other than Miss Chelo. The revelation was astounding. An ally of that importance could not just be killed (although we should make it clear that under Chelo’s face there was the true face of the AntiChelo, who, on orders from the Condesa de Merlín, was revenging herself on Chelo). Fifo turned livid with fury, while his mind was assailed with questions. Was it right to murder a person who had always been a faithful Mata Hari for him? Should the life of that ridiculous faggot be spared? And just at that crucial moment, throughout the auditorium there boomed the even more stentorian roaring of the computers, which were bellowing like bulls in the Garden of Computers, demanding their reports. The visit to them could no longer be postponed. There was a blast of cornets, trumpets, bullhorns, alarms, sirens, or whatever it is that people blow moments before an atomic blast begins. And then, as the floodwaters continued to inundate his Palace, Fifo gave the order to depart immediately for the Garden of Computers.

  A PRAYER

  And here again is the color of summer, with its repetitive, terrible hues . . . desperate bodies in this blinding light seeking solace, consolation . . . bodies that exhibit themselves, writhe and squirm, yearn for each other, and stretch out to bake in this endless, hopeless summer. Here again is the color of summer—the summer glare that blurs our outlines and drives us mad, in this country—run aground on its own deterioration, its own terrible weather, its own madness—that is Hell incarnate: a lethal, glaring, colorful eternity. And out there beyond this horrible watery prison—what, if anything, awaits us? Who, if anyone, cares about our summer, or our watery prison, or this weather that simultaneously isolates us within ourselves and fulminates against us? Outside this summer, what do we have? . . . Here again is the threat of the teenagers that the sun first, like a spotlight, turns its light on and then, as they pass before it, plunges into darkness. And one must walk on, as though that street corner down there held some compelling reason for us to walk toward it; one must walk on, as though this sidewalk of fire were itself the promised land. The plants’ exhalations produce hallucinatory mirages. The smell of cut grass rises in waves; the fragrance of tiny white flowers greets us as we pass, and carries us up and away. To be, to be, we want to be . . . . And the color of summer has taken over every nook and corner. Our wet bodies thrill to a boundless prickling. And still, sometimes, as we grow old, we dream. And still, sometimes, we feel that in this blinding light—in a vision of blinding light—a naked angel with lovely wings will come down to visit us. And still, sometimes, like withering old maids, we are ready (mistakenly) to grow tender. And so we walk on through this thick, steamy, fiery air, which from time to time turns reddish. Our wet, razor-sharp bodies slice through this frightening quietness, which echoes, silently, in our every fiber—and we defy the heavens to fall upon us as we try to find a response out there in the glowing splendor of the sea. But all there is is bodies—writhing, squirming, coiling about one another, hooking to one another in the midst of a Carnival without shadows, in which every person wears the mask he feels like wearing, in which betrayal and ass-wiggling are part of the official system, part of our most fundamental tradition. . . . Later, the rains will come, great downpours, and a desperation beyond time will begin to germinate within us all. New waves of light and humidity will come, and there will be no rock, or doorway, or tree, or shrub that will not be fuel for our desolation and despair. We will be that pile of bones, abandoned, rotting in the sun in a patch of weeds, a pile of bones calcined by tedium and the merciless certainty that there is no escape. Because it is not possible to escape the color of summer. Because that color, that sadness, that petrified flight, that sparkling, gleaming, glaring tragedy—that knowledge—is us.

  O Lord, don’t let me just melt away in these interminable summers. Let me be a meteor-like flash of horror that comes and is gone forever. Don’t let the new year, the new summer—the same summer as always—continue to beat me down, wear me away, erode me, and once more command me to throw myself into the light, ridiculous, wrinkled, pathetic, wet to my skin, and searching. By next summer, Lord, grant that I’ll have ceased to exist. Let me be that pile of bones abandoned in a patch of weeds, calcined by the sun.