Victorio is amused and at the same time touched by her shameless way of lying.
“Well, then, you should know, Triumpho, especially if you had thought of becoming a priest, and if you are my daughter’s best friend, that in this house God lurks in every corner and He is our consolation and our hope.”
“Don’t worry, ma’am, I also believe in God, and I know that He forgives me when I make jokes at His expense.” Victorio knows that God doesn’t abide by jokes: as if any god has ever had a sense of humor!
The old lady sighs. “If it weren’t for God.” She joins her hands and raises them, clasped. “If it weren’t for God, do you think we could bear this horror?”
Victorio doesn’t have to look at the unmade beds, the doorless wardrobes, and the luminous photographs on the walls. “I understand,” he exclaims.
“And why didn’t you finish your studies for the priesthood?”
“The seminary building collapsed,” Victorio says without skipping a beat. “It was a very old seminary, it just collapsed.”
The old lady lowers her head without unclasping her hands, without surrendering, and sighs: “God, Lord of the Universe…”
Salma, meanwhile, has gotten completely undressed as if it were no big deal, while singing in a sweet voice,
Rezando a Dios, se lanzaban al mat
Dejándonos, hacia ningún lugar…
With a prayer to God, they set out to sea.
Leaving us here, their direction unknown…
She isn’t wearing a bra, and Victorio can see her small, kneaded breasts, her underwear, as bright red as the dress and so small it seems like a child’s panties, too little to fit her well-developed hips. Victorio realizes that the girl is younger and more charming than he had imagined. He notices her handsome eyes: large, dark, endowed with a look of intelligence and curiosity, not the sort to be intimidated. Since they are intelligent, you can also see a hint of sarcasm in them. Salma kisses one of her hands and brings it to her sex, her mons veneris, which has been carefully shaved. “This has been my pot of gold,” she says. Then she caresses her stomach, her thighs, draws a finger across the lips. “All this is gold, you, pure gold, with rubies and diamonds and coral.” And he notes the mockery and self-pity hidden in her words. Salma sings again,
Rezando a Dios, se lanzaban al mar…
“Whose song is that?” he asks.
She looks at him as if the question incensed her. “Whose do you think, you? Carlitos Varela, the finest composer in this little patch of land we call Cuba.”
“I like Pablo Milanés, too.”
She seems not to hear him. “I’m tired, Triumpho, very tired, iamverrytired, Andy dearr . . .”
“Go on, get to bed, sweet,” he advises her.
She goes up to Victorio and removes his drenched shirt. There is no wickedness in her movements, but rather something maternal that keeps him from stepping back. She dries him with an old, foul-smelling towel, and gives him one of Chichi’s shirts, which doesn’t look too bad on him. “Triumpho, you must be about forty, right?”
“Forty-six. Remember, the assault on Moncada,” he clarifies.
“I don’t know a thing about those barracks, you, I don’t have a memory, not at all, not at all. Say, you’re not so bad, you, to tell the truth, you could still get by for a while, it’s a pity that…” She looks at her mother, amused, and puts her finger to her lips. “Know what women say when they see a fag they like? Girl, what a waste.” She yawns. “Yes, I oughta sleep, true enough, but let’s have that soup first and then we’ll sleep, you can sleep in Chichi’s bed if you want, he’s off in Viñales, the lucky bastard.” She begins serving the soup in a pair of bowls. “Oh, God, what a miracle, carrot soup with greens! Mamá, you’ve outdone yourself, it’s like you had a premonition that Triumpho, our grand Triumpho, was on his way”
The mother smiles with satisfaction. “The carrots and the greens, my friend Dulce brought them for me, the one who cleans the chapel of La Dolorosa, in Calle Corrales, next to the fire station, do you know who Dulce is?”
The soup tastes good indeed, like something cooked in an old convent, Victorio thinks. Sitting on these beds, in this sweltering photography studio converted into living quarters, at this hour of the night, when wet clothes have left traces on his burning skin, this soup has become the most exquisite delicacy possible: it tastes heavenly.
“Did you see the balloons?” Salma suddenly asks. She is holding the bowl between her thighs, next to her shaved pubis. Victorio doesn’t know what she is talking about. “Don’t tell me you didn’t see the balloons? Oh, they’re beautiful, you, with thousands of colors and flags and baskets like they’re made of wicker, and with 2001 painted on them, like, in phosphorescent colors, they’re so lovely, you, those balloons are so lovely for traveling through the sky, I swear.”
“What balloons are those?” asks the mother.
“They’re in the field where people go to run, next to the Ciu-dad Deportiva…”
“Oh, you mean the hot-air balloons!” exclaims Victorio. “Yes, there’s ten of them, exactly ten, ten hot-air balloons like the ones in Jules Verne.”
“Big balloons, for traveling,” Salma explains. “They say they’re going to set them loose into the sky on the thirty-first of December, at twelve midnight, to celebrate the arrival of 2001.”
“A nice idea,” the mother approves, “balloons to go up on high and come closer to God, a nice idea, yes indeed, nice, very nice.”
Salma has remained holding her empty spoon suspended in the air, and with a gesture in the other hand, as if she were taking time out to reflect, says, “Those balloons would be good to steal, to go up in the air in search of Andy Garcia, what do you think, Triumpho, get to Hollywood by balloon?”
“To New York!” the mother proposes excitedly.
Victorio looks at the mother in surprise. The soup is so good and its reality is so tangible that New York seems like a pipe dream to him.
“You know, Triumpho, because I told you, that New York is the city of my mother’s dreams.”
Victorio is on the verge of reminding her that they just met, under an arch in the ancient city wall; he looks at the mother in her enigmatic housecoat and inscrutable smile, and all he can do is agree: “Yeah, I know, New York, your dear mother’s obsession, Fifth Avenue, Central Park, Lincoln Center…, right, but the thing is, New York is so far away.”
The mother suddenly lifts her head and wipes the smile off her face, like someone who has heard a danger signal. Salma throws Victorio a look of desperation, reproach, incredulity, … hatred? “What are you saying? Idiot, imbecile, Defeato! How did you get it into your head to say that New York is far away?” He gets the impression that Salma is set to hurl the soup bowl at his head. “After Matanzas, the closest city to Havana is New York, my boy, and if you didn’t know that, then listen and learn! Two or three hours in one of those balloons, tops!”
Silence overtakes the old photography studio. A tense, biting silence. Stubborn as a stone wall. The mother has clasped her hands again. This time she is squeezing them between her knees. Then she speaks in muted tones, in a soft, withered, tame, tired voice that seems to rise from the depths of a pit of disillusions. “As you doubtless know, Triumpho, sir, my husband, Bernardo, the father of Isabelita and Robertico, lives in New York, in a very good neighborhood, he says, at least that is what he has always told us, and you will have to forgive me if I don’t tell you the name of the neighborhood, my memory is gone, I have no memory My husband is a musician, as you know, a flautist who has played in Cuban bands since he was a very young man, beginning years ago with Tito Gomez and the Orquesta Riverside, right after Robertico was born; he went on tour to Bulgaria and he deserted there, caught a ride and didn’t stop until he got to…, to where, Isabelita?”
“To Vienna, Mama.”
“Yes, until he got to Vienna, and then his friends from New York sent to find him, Vicentico Valdés and Tito Puente and La Lupe, the singer
, she’s a marvelous singer, a marvelous woman, you know? and we always called her Yi-yi-yi, because we knew her in Santiago de Cuba; she was studying in the normal school to be a teacher and she was singing and trying to sound like Olga Guillot and Imperio Argentina. And as I was telling you, Triumpho, sir, that’s where my husband ended up, and I had no idea what his plans were in Bulgaria. It didn’t surprise me, to tell the truth, he hated this poverty; later he wrote and promised to bring us there, but the trip is expensive, so expensive, that much you know — it isn’t far away, but it certainly is expensive. And he doesn’t send letters, either: he says he forgot how to write in Christian, and why bother writing to us in English? Since all the English we know is gudmornin…”
Victorio quickly finishes his soup and makes as if to leave.
Salma attempts a conciliatory sign. “The fact is, there are ten lovely balloons in the Ciudad Deportiva,” she says, standing up, and she places her empty bowl on top of the sewing machine.
Victorio observes that Salma’s backside is more beautiful than the rest of her body, that its gentle skin calls out to be caressed.
“Mamá,” Salma exclaims in the jubilant tone of someone who has been struck by a wonderful recollection: “Mamá, today I saw the clowniest clown I’ve ever seen.”
“What clown is that, Isabelita?” the mother asks, as excited as a little girl.
“I was walking around the Parque Central and there I see a bunch of people looking up, I don’t like to look in the same direction everybody else is looking because sometimes people do that just to mess with you, so I lifted my eyes like this, just a little bit, and I saw him, you, it was so great! At first I thought it was a little boy, and then an old man, and now I couldn’t tell you if it was a boy or an old man; he was dressed like a sultan, in red, red, incandescent red, a red flame, with his tunic and his turban, and his suit had golden stripes, ay! How ridiculous! And the most ridiculous thing, you, was that he was walking — what do I mean, walking — dancing, dancing, dancing above the balustrades of the Hotel Inglaterra. If he had fallen he would have killed himself right there, you, because if he fell from up there he would have totally died, he would have splattered, but there he is, would you believe it, Mama, Triumpho, fearless, absolutely fearless, and he kept on dancing across the roof of the hotel, and the best part: pulling doves from his turban. Every time he took off his turban, out came ten, twelve doves, and they’d fly off happy as could be. It must be fab-u-lous for a dove that’s been locked up inside a turban to escape and fly up into the sky, which is infinite, isn’t it? Yes, infinite, endless; let me tell you, there’s nothing like freedom, for doves or for anybody, freedom, flying and flying and flying. And I stood there astounded, and everybody around me was just as astounded, all silent, it didn’t seem like Havana, not at all, the silence was intense: like a Vienna or a Geneva silence, a civilized silence, I mean, everybody standing still, quiet, fascinated, watching that man, who you couldn’t tell if he was a boy or an old guy, dressed like a sultan from the Thousand and One Nights, dancing and setting doves free.”
The mother can’t stop smiling and nodding her head, as if she were seeing it through the reality of her blindness. Victorio remembers the clown he had seen dancing on the scaffold that holds up (or held up) the building where he lived until very recently.
Salma begins to move in the middle of the hushed sluggishness of the old Van Dyck photography studio. She is dancing with slow movements, very slow, voluptuous movements, not without a certain elegance, a certain refinement, as if she is discovering her body as she dances. Suddenly she stops, eyes closed, lips embellished by a strange joy She approaches Victorio and kisses him on the lips. Naked as she is, she accompanies him to the door of the old photography studio and goes out with him to the sidewalk, where night is so deep, so dark, that it seems final. Dawn will never come. Fortunately there isn’t a soul in the street, and if nobody’s there and nobody can judge, there’s nothing immodest about Salma’s nakedness.
“Dawn will never come,” says Victorio, and he adjusts his coarse bag on his shoulder.
She kisses him again on the lips. “Don’t be a pessimist, and if you decide to steal one of the balloons, let me know, I’d love to take a balloon to Beverly Hills, that would be the greatest way to get Andy Garcia’s attention, and even Brad Pitt’s or Robert De Niro’s, don’t you think?”
“If we take a balloon to Beverly Hills, they’ll ask us to do a remake of Around the World in Eighty Days, and I’ll play Phileas Fogg, that is, David Niven, and you’ll do Cantinflas.”
“They’ll sign the deal with us for sure,” she exclaims, and claps her hands.
“One of these days I’ll come back here,” he promises, trying to empty his voice of emotion.
“I’ll be waiting,” she says, still dreaming of her Hollywood deal.
The sky is so clear and so full of stars that it seems it never rained, that the thunderstorm was a fantasy To refute it, however, here are the streets and sidewalks, covered with puddles. Victorio looks at his watch and confirms that it has lost its crystal, that the hour hand has disappeared, that the minute hand is bent.
“If there’s no watch,” he tells himself, “there’s no time, and if there’s no time, eternity is come.” And he liberates his wrist from the useless artifact. “Time is finished: I’m immortal.”
And though the sky might be clear, there are the puddled streets, ground down by time, poverty, and lack of care. The minor lakes in the streets of Havana reproduce the facades of buildings more sharply than the timid light of the streetlamps can illuminate them. Victorio halts before a puddle and thinks he sees, reflected in its crystal water, the silhouette of a hot-air balloon. The balloon has sloughed off its colors and now has the same earth tone as the clouds and the facades of buildings. It slips through the clouds in the mirror of a puddle. Victorio looks up in search of the real balloon. All he can see is the patient, tidy, pious sky, animated by numberless stars.
To the exposed vulnerability of loneliness, Victorio adds the coldness of fear. If loneliness is like not having a house, fear is similar to the humid cold of Cuba. When a northern blows on this island, it is pointless to close doors and windows, wrap up warmly, try to hide. An inveterate traveler, Leonora Duse, used to say that in the North you could see the cold but not feel it, while in the South you feel it but can’t see it. In Cuba it is always hot, and when it is cold, it is a stubborn cold, a ubiquitous cold, a cold that won’t let you be.
“This has always been a country of diabolical extremes,” Victorio explains, and perhaps he is talking to the night, “heat and cold here have no limits, neither of them. When it’s hot, the heat’s got you panting, suffocating; when it’s cold, the cold gets under your skin, freezes you. The cold is like the heat here: humid, very humid, too humid; after all, the sea has the Island surrounded.”
Like the cold, fear is unrelenting. It follows you everywhere like a spotlight in the theater. It doesn’t do you any good trying to squeeze into your favorite disappearing spot, no, no good at all: the shaft of light, the cold, finds you and shines on you.
“What am I afraid of?” Victorio shrugs. He doesn’t know. Fear: I’m afraid, he’s afraid, that ought to be sufficient. When all is said and done, you suffer the same, so what’s the point in knowing whether what induces your fear is authentic or not?
Victorio feels that he is being watched. He doesn’t admit that he is being watched, but that he feels it — which could be worse. He believes he has noticed them observing his steps, recording his gestures, taking down his words. He has never seen anyone following him. But he must recognize, after all, that the most treacherous enemy is the invisible one, the one who is ever-hidden, the one who never shows his weapons or his face. Which do you prefer, he asks himself, the Beautiful Angel of Darkness or the Repulsive Monster of Light? Immateriality, he tries to explain, confers power on your enemy, inordinate power, and your enemy knows this and therefore does not let himself be seen, and you mig
ht say he doesn’t exist. Fear knows all about mistrust, and, being as old as man, it is familiar with ancient, subtle, ever more refined wiles.
The eyes that observe Victorio without his ever knowing when, why, or where are always the vilest, the most dangerous ones. Victorio has stopped acting naturally, and his own eyes have taken up the task of controlling him. Here, he thinks, is where the Beautiful Angel of Darkness scores his greatest success: the moment when the angel no longer has any need of watching him, the moment when the watched becomes his own adversary, his self-censor, his own inquisitor. Victorio is the greatest adversary of Victorio, then, his greatest accuser.
And thus he reaches many conclusions. One of them is that self-vigilance means, and will always mean, the total victory of the Demon of Vigilance.
He doesn’t wander around Havana, he doesn’t stroll; he slips through the ruins, through the neighborhoods in the south, the west, the southeast, where people’s lives are even worse. He supposes that, if the inhabitants of these suburbs have too much on their hands just trying to find a way to survive, they’ll have less time to snoop. He finds himself in neighborhoods where he never would have ventured before: Jesús María, Pogolotti, La Lisa, Zamora, El Fanguito, La Jata.
There are days and nights when he dreams of having the blessed gift of invisibility, the pride and glory of the powerful enemy. He would give more than he owns for a philter that would turn him translucent and allow him to walk around the city without fear. Since magical philters don’t exist, or have been lost with the lack of poetry in this savage era, Victorio tries to go unnoticed, which is the closest you can get to invisibility. He discovers an effective way of attaining this, consisting of two steps: first, speak only if spoken to, in mono-syllables if at all possible; second, never look anyone in the eye. Mouth closed and eyes down.
Distant Palaces Page 5