He also has a torch whose flame is lit with the clown’s breath, and a large mirror in which you don’t see yourself as you are, but as you would like to be. He keeps, moreover, a player piano or organ. He has a gold-and-red cape that can make those who wear it disappear, and a black armchair for taking journeys merely by closing your eyes.
A graceful light filters in through the tall window and finds a way to soften the darkness inside the ruins of the theater. Silence — capricious, impulsive — reigns, despite the distant laughter that arrives from who-knows-where. There is also some sort of conversation present in the background, some sort of faraway music, the sound of a television. Or of the wind.
“It’s so tiresome, it’s too too difficult,” sighs Don Fuco, “to live in the Land-of-Forgetting and struggle against it at the same time. Against forgetting, I mean. I’m sure you understand me. There’s a reason why the ancients, in their ever-wise way, claimed that Lethe, the goddess of forgetting, was born of Eris, the goddess of discord, who also engendered two other children that were therefore Lethe’s brothers: Hypnos, sleep, and Thanatos, death. Like everything else in this life, there’s more than one side to forgetting.” A few seconds later, a certain pitying tone can be heard in his voice. “In this country we suffer from every possible type of forgetting, don’t you think?”
“I’ve never thought about it,” Victorio responds. “To me, forgetting seems like a solution to the frightfulness of life.”
“Don’t be vulgar, my friend,” the clown replies in disgust. “If there’s anything you should avoid in life, it’s triteness. Let’s go back to the starting point: there’s forgetting, and there’s forgetting.” And he laughs, knowing he’s made a trite remark.
“Please, don’t get sibylline on me,” exclaims the other, amused, feeling bold, vulgarly sibylline.
“The Sibyl was a woman inspired by the gods.” And he laughs. “Thanks for the flattery, I don’t deserve it.”
Victorio looks at his hands. His hands tremble, as if they held the solution to all the world’s problems.
“I said, and said rightly, that there’s forgetting, and there’s forgetting, and that phrase is a useful bit of foolishness. Sometimes, forgetting mitigates the frightfulness of life, to use your words, Victorio, my friend, though they’re a little overblown, for my taste — I’m a man who doesn’t care much for epics or tragedies, as you might have noticed; I love the comic sketch, and miniature beauty at its peak — sometimes forgetting assuages the horror, I repeat, and that kind of forgetting is not merely beneficial but indispensable. Remembering the Holocaust is, I suppose, a basic obligation, or, better put, a civil obligation, given that we must bear that horror in mind: among other things, to prevent it from being repeated.”
He raises a hand closed into a fist and strikes the floor. Then he raises both hands, smooth as resting wings. A lovely smile lights his face.
“Remembering the Holocaust is extremely important: there is something else, my friend, that is also very important, and that something is never to forget certain pleasures. Yes, Victorio, really listen to that glorious word: plea—sure.” (He exaggerates the word, pronouncing it with his whole mouth and tongue, as if to savor it.) “It would never occur to a satisfied, contented man, a man unmoved by fear, to lock up someone else, or to rob someone else, or kill someone else, don’t you think? Ponder that for a while, but you don’t have to try too hard, it doesn’t take much effort, and you’ll see that the reason for all sorts of slavery, tyranny, holocausts, assassinations, repressions, wars, has to be sought in a shortage of happiness. The man who’s fascinated by grasping for power, the man who’s fascinated by exercising power, and who holds on to power like a life raft: the man, my friend, who wants to dominate everyone else, who thinks of himself as the chosen-of-the-gods, who sincerely believes (let’s concede that he’s sincere, at least) that ‘he has been called for a higher mission’; whatever he might look like: grandiose or insignificant, when it comes right down to it, that man is an unhappy wretch, and worse, a slave, and even a poor devil. If only he wouldn’t screw everybody else so much!”
After this invective, Don Fuco seems to choke, and he is overcome by a coughing fit. When he manages to quiet the cough, he flutters a maddeningly white handkerchief around his mouth, leaving a scent of fine perfume in the air. He clears his throat. He seems to calm down. His voice has taken on the unclouded tone of familiarity. A long silence arises in the ruins of the theater, all over the city. He shrugs his shoulders. He doesn’t laugh. But laughter trembles in his hands, shines in his eyes, echoes in his words, emphasizes the pallor of his skin, his lips, and, together with the afternoon wind, stirs his thin gray hair.
“I wonder whether forgetting has something to do with the climate; what do you think?” he asks without caring in the slightest about the answer. “The climate always seems to be the easiest solution: this damp heat, ay! All it lets you do is stretch out in a hammock, under a mango tree, with your fan and your glass of lemonade. This heat that has us all sunk into lethargy! Lethargy! You’d think they made up the word just for this disastrous island stuck between the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. So, did you know that the word ‘lethargy,’ just like its cousin, lethargic,’ comes from Lethe, the goddess of forgetting, as I just said? This is one thing, my friend, on which we have to agree with the heads of state: it is necessary to remember! It must have been Renan, I’m not sure — you know, forgetting is like a virus, a curse placed on the blood — who said that nations are formed by the memories of their great deeds.” He raises one hand to his lips and studies Victorio with merry attentiveness. “It seems to me I’m simplifying, if not ruining, Renan’s notion, but I suppose he’d be willing to forgive me. I simply want to insist on my main idea: to dominate, heads of state legitimize themselves through heroes and their heroism, and they emphasize the brave side, the indomitable side of the people they want to subjugate, and they constantly remind them of great feats (which they exaggerate more often than not, or, let’s go ahead and say it, which they invent) such as heroic acts that never happened, that were really shabby little acts that were converted through the sinister art of rewriting history into heroic acts, because, let’s concede this once and for all: History is also Literature. My God, even a small child could see that much: something that never happened, told by someone who was never there.”
He pauses briefly. He strums his fingers. Breathes deeply. The smell of the sea grows more intense as dusk falls. He has another coughing fit; he brings his hands to his mouth and pulls out a bone and a flower.
“That’s how it is!” the clown whispers, categorically, without giving Victorio any idea what he is referring to.
Modesta diosa del final del día
tarde consoladora, amiga grata…
Modest goddess of the close of day,
consoling twilight, cherished friend…
recites Don Fuco in his finest register. “A lovely poem by Julia, the least well known of the Perez sisters,” he notes, and returns to silence.
“It is hard not to notice,” he says at last, “that heads of state always endeavor to recall sad times, to recall heroic acts, acts of sacrifice, to go back to eras when things were very unhappy, and to emphasize heroes and martyrs, people who suffered or gave their lives. And what happens? Well, in comparison, the present looks like a panacea. Imagine, friend, if I spent the whole afternoon telling you for hours on end about the persecution of the Christians under Nero, or the history of the African slave trade, or if I spent hours some pathetic afternoon reminding you how much the Cuban people suffered under the resettlement program planned by the most sadly famous Majorcan of all Majorcans, Valeriano Weyler, you’d think your life right now were some sort of kingdom of good fortune… isn’t it true? So I’ve come to the conclusion that human happiness must be sought elsewhere, that we shouldn’t compare ourselves with unhappy people but with happy ones; that we shouldn’t remember disasters, but the glorious good times.”
Now the clown is the caricature of a head of state, touching his neck with both hands, clearing his throat. He emits a sound, a repeated syllable (pa, pa, pa), perhaps in order to check the quality of his voice.
“The beauty of the world tries to stay proportionate to the wickedness of men,” he emphasizes, while opening the dressing room used by Anna Pavlova, the Great One.
Don Fuco is pale and haggard. Is something the matter with him? The dressing room in none too large, and seems much smaller because of the amount of furniture and objects that can be guessed at in the shadows. The clown takes off his shoes and places them in a basket that is tight against the wall, next to the door. Since Victorio is already barefoot, he follows him without worrying. He feels overtaken by a cheerful fear that excites him. Don Fuco turns on the light. Hundreds of sparkles flash in Victorio’s eyes. As he adapts to the excessive brightness, the first thing he discovers is the great number of dresses that are hanging in the room. Dresses from every era, in every color, form, and fabric. Morning, afternoon, and evening dresses. Dresses that reflect the profusion of light in sequins, glass beads, and jewels. Dresses that turn into mighty sources of light. Victorio realizes that there are also books, jewels, papers, and objects.
*
“This is where the country’s relics are kept, and kept well: the clothes of Rita Montaner, Barbarito Diez, Beny Moré, Celia Cruz, Alicia Alonso; here are the manuscripts of so many famous authors, the guitars of Maria Teresa Vera, Manuel Corona, Pablo Milanés, and Marta Valdés, the piano of Lecuona, keepsakes of Alicia Rico, Can-dita Quintana, Esther Borja, Miriam Acevedo, Iris Burguet, and Blanquita Becerra, the bloodstained shirt of Julio Antonio Mella, the likewise bloodstained tablecloth of the Lamadrid family on which Julián del Casal died, paintings by Portocarrero, Amelia, Tomás Sanchez, Acosta León, Raúl Martinez, works by Ñica Eiriz; there are lots of relics here, my friend, and if I don’t mention all of them it’s because I don’t want to overwhelm you. But I also know that some things are missing. I dream, for example, of getting Pablo Quevedo’s crystal-clear voice, though as you surely know he left no recordings behind; I wish I could have the taste of sapodilla, the smell of rain, the morning dew from the Valle de Viñales; I wish I could store the tears of some of those who took to the sea in 1994 in those unstable rafts, I wish I could keep samples of the tragic farewells in airports, the echoing of horses’ hooves at the Battle of Mai Tiempo. What I need is all the relics of our country — not the ones that are considered sacred, but the others, the real ones, the profane relics, the ones that aren’t epic, that don’t serve as weapons of war.”
It is much easier to get out of the theater than Victorio had guessed. All you have to do is lay down on Giselle’s tomb; the weight of your body sets a complicated-looking deus ex machina in motion, lowering you into the basement, from which you can walk through narrow hallways and corridors to a small door that opens under a staircase.
This discovery takes place on one of the many days when people are marching for who-knows-what political cause. This will be the first time Victorio has left the theater since the night he arrived. He has to accompany Don Fuco to the Colon Cemetery. Chaca, a great old friend of Don Fuco, has died. The news has saddened the clown, who avers that he cannot make the trip alone. He doesn’t wear his clown costume. He has given Victorio a worn leather satchel, like the ones that family doctors carried many years ago.
When he descends like Giselle in her tomb and trails through long, dark corridors, Victorio is dazzled by the brightness. He has passed through the caressing darkness into the provocative light. The walls look scorched by the excesses of light. Throughout the northern hemisphere, he thinks, fall must be beginning now, and in Havana there aren’t any dead leaves (which means, among many other things, that no Jacques Prévert would write “c’est une chanson qui nous ressemble. . .”), no evening lights, no cool breezes, no drizzle as cool as the breezes, none of that melancholy so characteristic of fall, a melancholy that makes you want to cry and laugh. Throughout the southern hemisphere, spring must be beginning now, and in Havana there aren’t any tulips, lilies, or narcissi, no migratory birds are arriving, the sun isn’t burning again after long months of white and gray, because here the sun is always burning. And you don’t feel the kind of desire to laugh that is frankly a desire to really laugh out loud without hiding your tears or concealing your nostalgia. No Marquis of Bradomín will come here to announce that “the cheerful and uneven ringing of the mule bells” awakens “an echo in the flowering olive grove.”
It isn’t spring. Or fall, either. Havana lies at a latitude that lacks any transformations. It occurred to them to locate this city on the motionless side of the world. And since it is always the same and is unfamiliar with change, to him the city feels defeated, shattered, much more so than others that are older than it and that have been just as punished by history, yet not tormented by anything quite so baneful as immobility.
Victorio has just rediscovered Havana, after a length of time that he would find it hard to specify. He discovers it in all its ugly beauty, its uncouth elegance. Since Victorio has never left the Island and doesn’t know what it feels like to return, he hasn’t been able to experience the true sensation of rediscovering Havana.
Together with Don Fuco he is walking into the narrow, filthy streets, not with the sorrowful emotions of someone who is coming back, but with the tingling joy of someone who is going away. It isn’t spring, or fall, either; nevertheless, the day hasn’t turned out hot. A breeze rustles the tops of the trees and carries the scent of the cemetery, which comes from mixing various scents, such as that of earth combined with the sweet smell of fresh-cut flowers. The breeze conies laden with revolutionary slogans or threats broadcast on loudspeakers: “Whosoever attempts to take over Cuba will reap only the dust of her soil drenched in blood, if he does not perish in the battle. We will drown ourselves in the sea before we consent to be anyone’s slaves. Dear imperialists, we are absolutely unafraid of you. In this country, the order for combat is always standing. We are an invincible people. Men die, the party is immortal. Country or death. Socialism or death.”
A funeral cortege enters through the huge, eclectic front gate of the Colon Cemetery. Other corteges are waiting at the round chapel for their dead to be absolved. Don Fuco and Victorio wander among marble statues — Christs with compassionate gazes, tearful angels, imploring virgins. Victorio comes to experience the great serenity that always overtakes him in cemeteries.
At last, at three o’clock sharp, here comes the cortege of the old and famous pastry maker Chaca, the Saintly Pastry Maker, as they called her, famous for her desserts, well loved in her neighborhood of Cayo Hueso, especially around the house near Callejón del Hammel where, until yesterday, people of all sorts, of every race and religion, of the most diverse cultures, would gather every afternoon to eat desserts that Chaca handed out with a smile, with that naive expression of hers, as if she were unaware of the quality of the desserts she was giving away.
Chaca’s retinue consists of a veritable multitude of blacks, Chinese, w’hites, mulattos, embraced by the shared misfortune of their great loss. Some of the women raise blue-sleeved wrists and sing,
Yemayá azezú, azezú Yemayá…
Others instead sing quietly and say their rosaries and recite Our Fathers, while there are a few who recite the twenty-third Psalm.
When she reaches the open grave, one old black woman breaks a large clay water jug. The explosion of water blesses the ground and walls of the grave, while the old woman lifts a song in an African language.
The coffin descends into the pit with slow composure. It is felt hitting the ground, and a powerful silence spreads. It is as if everyone there were waiting for what, in the rapture of a moment, was about to happen.
With surprising agility, leaping from tomb to tomb on the tips of his ballet slippers, Don Fuco appears. This time his suit and mushroom hat are an effective sea blue. His face is coated with white makeup, a
nd his tremendous nose gleams seashell pink. He is spinning a blue ball on the tip of his index finger. On the recently placed lid of the Saintly Pastry Maker’s tomb, Don Fuco performs virtuoso entrechats worthy of Nijinsky, the greatest-enemy-of-the-law-of-gravity, while passing the ball from one hand to the other, and from his hands to his head.
Victorio cannot get over his astonishment at seeing the old man accomplish such feats with that aged old body, tormented by years, drudgery, and dearth. The clown’s smile does not even waver from the effort. When he finishes his entrechats, he adopts the pose of Giovanni da Bologna’s Flying Mercury, with the addition of the ball, which spins on the tip of his foot, raised in attitude.
Victorio finds him leaning against a pedestal that supports an archangel with fallen wings and an imploring expression. Sweating, eyes closed, Don Fuco now seems to have doubled in age. “I can’t go on,” he exclaims. “I’m dead, this is too much for my age.” He opens his eyes and blinks several times as if the daylight bothered him. “Does it do any good?” the clown asks. “I had to do it,” — Don Fuco’s voice seems to emerge from the depths of a vault, devoid of tonality — “for her, for Chaca, the finest pastry maker in the world. I don’t think anyone on the planet made desserts like she did, and she gave them away, friend; she never charged a penny. She said her business was to sweeten the palate. ‘Life is very bitter, Fuco,’she’d tell me, all serious, ‘sweet and bitter are the most important tastes in life,’ and she’d laugh, and Chaca’s smile would be as sweet as her pastries, and I’d see her spend days and nights making her sponge cakes, custards, boniatillos, cremes, majaretes, lemon and orange pastries, arroz con leche; she’d give away baskets of sweets through the little window that she opens next to the door of her house.
Distant Palaces Page 12