Distant Palaces

by Abilio Estevez

  Don Fuco looks despairingly at Victorio. The white base of his makeup is dissolving in his sweat. His teeth are no longer pearls, but green bits of underwater fossils. He has asked for a moment alone, so Victorio lets Don Fuco rest on one of the benches in the catacombs of the mausoleum for immigrants from the town of Ortigueira, and wanders aimlessly around the cemetery, which is the best way to walk through a cemetery.

  Victorio likes to visit cemeteries. He enjoys the morbid pleasure of reading tombstones and epitaphs and sorrowful, genteel, and shocking verses, and of looking at names and calculating ages from the dates etched in marble. The sky has now clouded over. The clouds rush past rapidly, low and reddish. Wind rustles the treetops, stirs the faded flowers in the flower boxes, and carries the smells of jasmine, stagnant water, and earth from one end of the cemetery to the other.

  Victorio enters the southern part of the cemetery, that is, the poor side, the broad and neglected region of anonymous stucco and cement tombs, the side with no mediating angels, no mourning women, no interceding virgins, no open books, no marble statues, no pietàs, and no Christs. This is an extensive region where the only luxuries are flower boxes with crude epitaphs in lettering that the rain undertakes to erase, where sometimes not even flower boxes exist: just jelly jars or olive oil cans filled with water and wildflowers.

  Then he sees Salma. She is sitting on a tomb, and her eyes are red from crying. Her tears, however, do not keep her face from lighting up with a lovely smile when she notices Victorio’s presence, and she shouts, “Triumpho!” as if she were at an amusement park. “Ay, Triumpho, Triumphito, what a surprise, you!”

  He couldn’t have imagined how a woman like Salma would be able to remember him just from seeing him once, when they had shared nothing but a bowl of soup and a few hours together one rainy night.

  In one graceful leap, the young woman stands up. She plants a kiss on his cheek. He notes that she has cut her hair: now she is wearing it very short, pageboy style, so the white shocks of hair have disappeared from her head. “You look prettier this way,” he observes, touching her head.

  “It’s so hot, you, this city’s enough to roast you, so the less you have on top, don’t you think?”

  “What are you doing here?” he inquires.

  “My mother,” she says, still smiling.

  “Your mother what?”

  “She parked the cart.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Eh! What’s wrong with you? What has ‘parked the cart’ always meant in Cuba-la-Bella, Triumpho? Or did you just get here from up North?”

  “No, that’s not it, Salma.”

  She keeps silent for a few seconds. “If you only knew, you, the phrase seems so right to me, ‘park the cart’! I even think it’s true, true-as-true; it’s like life is this big old cart, this huge, heavy cart that they give you when you’re born, like the ones the Chinese pull Europeans around with in the streets of China, yeah: you’re born and they tell you, ‘Come on, here you go!’ and bam! they foist the cart on you, and then you have to drag it around all your life, your whole life long, childhood, adulthood, old age, from when you open your eyes in the morning till you close them at night, and longer, because even when you have them closed you’re still dragging your jalopy around. You think you’re sleeping and resting, but wrong, boy, fucking wrong: you’re still dragging that old cart from one end to the other, and it’s getting heavier all the time, more loaded, because everything that happens in your life, you pile it on the old wagon they foisted on you when you were born, and so you go on for days and days, through cities and cities, bustling around the streets of life, till one day, one day you get sick and tired — you get sick of everything after a while — and you shout, ‘This is the end, goddam it. I can’t go on. I’m tired,’ and you go, peacefully, you park the cart and wham! Zap! You disappear!”

  Victorio can’t help smiling. “So, your mother decided to park the cart.”

  “She got tired, Triumphito, she got tired, poor woman, I understand her: she couldn’t go on, she was too sad.”

  “What did she die of?”

  “Nothing, you. I’d say she died of grief, that she was too sad and her cart had gotten too heavy. The thing was, my aunt Migdalia, my father’s sister, had come by my house to visit, by pure coincidence. She thought my mother looked sick, so she took her to her house in the Sierra del Arzobispo. I had disappeared — nothing new, you know? I did that a lot; you understand, Triumpho, life isn’t easy, not easy at all, is it? And whenever I’d come back home my mother was always there and she’d make me some soup, so when I didn’t see her that day, what a surprise! I practically went crazy, running around to every hospital I could think of, until my aunt Mary came to get me. My mother had already fallen into a coma, the doctors were talking about cerebral hemorrhages and blood irrigations, and I don’t know what all. Baloney, you! The only thing doctors understand are the mechanics, the pathologies, the anatomies — veins this, liver that, respiratory tract and kidneys the other, bullshit, boy! A doctor couldn’t tell you if you had sadness, or grief, or desperation, or a cart that was so heavy you just got tired, all because sadness and grief and desperation and heavy carts don’t leak or hurt or get inflamed or broken; exhaustion doesn’t get infected; weariness doesn’t flow through your arteries, bitterness isn’t made of lymph; resentment isn’t composed of cells, and they can’t amputate your cart, isn’t that so, Tri-umpho? Triumphito? My mother died because she was too sad. First, my father’s lousy exile. My father who used to play the New York clubs with the jazz greats. I never told Mother that my father had gotten remarried to a Dominican bolero singer, a famous woman, a lovely mulatta, Ligia Minaya was her name, a former judge who had left the law and Santo Domingo behind her to sing boleros in New York, a beautiful mulatta, that Minaya, being Dominican after all, you know? with long dresses, incredibly long, cheerful-green or malicious-green, the same shade as a bottle of Cerveza Presidente, tight dresses and enormous earrings with fake aquamarines and black gloves up to her elbows, and scandalous Dior perfumes; and I also didn’t tell her that my father had, has, three sons with her, three handsome mulattos, just imagine, sons of a Dominican mulatta and a Cuban mulatto, yes, Triumpho, my half-brothers on the Dominican side in Queens, New York, capital-of-the-whole-wide-universe.”

  Salma’s eyes are red again; she is blinking nervously. She rubs her hands sweetly along the lid of the vault, as if she were caressing her mother, and, leaning over, she kisses the shoddy granite.

  “Did your brother leave?”

  “Yes, child, didn’t I tell you?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, well, sorry. The night you came over, she said he was away in Viñales, remember?” She pauses before continuing. “She was lying, and lying the way you ought to lie: knowing that you’re telling a lie. Chichi, my brother, hooked up with an Italian prince. I don’t know if he’s a prince, but he is Italian, and I know that he’s into selling artworks, and he’s one of the key men for those auctions they have in New York, so if he isn’t a prince it doesn’t matter, because as for money he’s got more than enough, and he’s not ugly either, mid-forties, looks like Marcello Mastroianni when Mastroianni was forty-ish, not a bad-looking guy, you; and as for Chichi, my brother, what can I tell you? Beautiful, gorgeous, divine — I wish that for just one holiday I could look like him: black hair, green eyes, long lashes, a gymnast’s body without ever seeing the inside of a gym; a round, lush ass like two loaves, two real loaves, not the kind they sell in the corner store, bread kneaded with love and fine flour, and his prick is so beautiful and appetizing, it seems like it was made from honey, condensed milk, and fresh yuca dough. That’s why he’s been so lucky, Triumpho, because he’s pretty. Beauty is the first kind of luck and it attracts all the other kinds of luck, don’t you think? My little brother conquers men and women without saying a word, without doing a thing, just by appearing. The lucky bastard’s got magnetism, he was born to be admired and loved, and the f
irst woman who loved him was always my mother, more than she loved me, much more than she loved me — and just imagine if my brother Chichi isn’t beautiful, because I don’t mind that she loved him more, and that’s because I love him more myself than anyone else in this nasty world. I’d get upset with him, I’d say terrible things to him because he’d leave home and make my mother suffer, and as soon as he looked at me with his smile or took off his clothes in front of me with that skin of his, more delicious than a buñuelo with slices of guava, I’d break down crying, we’d break down crying, my mother would cry, too, the two of us would be there crying, and he could do whatever he wanted with us, with his smile and his green eyes, his white, white, white skin like a buñuelo before you fry it, his innocent little face, his I-didn’t-break-the-plate face.”

  Salma sighs. She gives Victorio another kiss on the cheek. “Its so good to find you, Triumphito! Some people disappear, others reappear, that’s life.” Two tears escape her eyes: her lips try to give the lie to them with a wonderful smile. “Yes, Triumphito dear, my brother Chichi left, went away, ran off, deserted, cut out, beat it, took off running, set out for a better life. He’s not the only one, you, not the first and not the last. In Cuba everybody wants to go, getting on a plane is synonymous with winning the lottery. The only solution? Leave the Island. What do you think, Triumpho, Triumphito?”

  He shrugs his shoulders. “Nothing, I don’t think anything, what do you want me to think? I’m getting tired, too, girl, real tired of dragging my cart from one place to the next. Yes, Salma, I also suffer from terminal weariness and terror in the blood. My sister also ran off, she lives in St. Petersburg — no, don’t be alarmed, not St. Petersburg, Russia — my sister isn’t crazy; she lives in a clean, handsome town in Florida, a tranquil, maybe too tranquil, sedate town on the west coast, near Tampa. They built a museum there dedicated to Salvador Dalí, and another Museum of Fine Arts where Victoria, my sister, works as a guard, a museum attendant.”

  “Divided families, sick country,” Salma reasons.

  Victorio pats her head, her masculine haircut. “Goodness, what a tremendous discovery!” he exclaims in the middle of an explosive laugh.

  She pays no attention to his mockery. “My brother left for Rome and I fooled my mother, I told her Chichi was wandering around Cuba, that’s why every night when I got home from work, you know, I’d ask her about my brother, ‘And Chichi?’ and she’d answer that he was going around, over here, over there; in Holguín, she’d tell me, Gibara, Guardalavaca, Marea del Portillo, and she’d run out of tourist centers, lots of occasions she mentioned the same place two or three times. Listen, Triumpho, if I had painted a map with the trip that Chichi was making according to my mother, it would have been the craziest itinerary, totally absurd, a lie, pure lies, bullshit, bullshit and lies. We both knew we were lying, we both knew that Chichi was in Rome in a marvelous penthouse near the Quirinal Palace where you can see the city and a half, all the way to the Vatican. There were two Chichis, Triumpho: the real Chichi that we never talked about and who we’d probably never see again, and the fake Chichi, the wanderer who was traveling all over the island, the Isle of Crap, the Screwed-over Archipelago, and nobody can put up with so much sadness, or live by fakery all the fucking time; the sadness and the fakery pile up on your cart, and your cart starts to get heavy, and heavy, and heavier, and too heavy, too fucking heavy! All that sadness makes it just too plain heavy, and you’re not a mule or a cart horse. That’s what happened to my mother, she was a smart little woman, her, she said ‘That’s enough!’ and decided to park the cart. She realized she was never going to reach my brother with that cart, you, and just see if they haven’t gotten tired of trying to fool us with that bitch of a phrase that all-roads-lead-to-Rome.”

  Don Fuco’s appearance brings about a mixture of shock and joy in Salma. The clown is dressed as a sultan in a bad Hollywood movie: Damascus clothing, red turban sprinkled with false rubies, black slippers embroidered with green and gold thread. “And this charming lady?” he asks in his singsong countertenor voice.

  Salma bows majestically as if she were truly standing before a sultan. It is obvious that this act of playful seriousness pleases the clown, who looks Salma over from top to bottom, searching, interested, amused. “I need,” he exclaims, “a woman like the great Asmania, the consort of Pailock the Great, who would be willing to let herself disappear.”

  Salma laughs. “If you are able to make me appear again, I wouldn’t have any problem with that,” she replies, enchanted.

  The clown nods. He makes short leaps, minute cabrioles that demonstrate the agility of his feet.

  “If you would be kind enough to make me appear, I would be brave enough to let myself disappear,” Salma insists. And she dances like a little girl.

  It would be safe to say that Salma feels she has entered a palace, one of the splendid palaces that Victorio only dreams about. Don Fuco proudly shows her around the place, and he squeezes her chin now and then as if she were a little girl.

  The first thing she does is sit on the toilet and allow her intestines to empty themselves luxuriously, in a manner very close to religious ecstasy. Second thing, she takes a shower. Salma experiences enormous pleasure when her skin comes in contact with perfumed soap and water that is warm from hours of sitting in the sun-baked pipes. Fascinated, blissful, she sings

  En la comarca de Su Majestad,

  todos repiten lo que dice el rey,

  él les da el agua, les da el vino y el pan

  pero más tarde les cobra la ley…

  In the country of His Majesty

  everybody repeats what the king has to say,

  he gives them their water, their wine, and their bread,

  but later his laws will make them all pay…

  From somewhere not far off a flute rises to accompany her voice. She sings with more brio. She steps out of the bath wet and naked, and enters the former dressing room, still singing. She finds Victorio and Don Fuco sitting on the floor Japanese-style around a table that is set with a tea service of the finest china, which they are using to serve linden, chamomile, and peppermint tea, piping hot.

  “Just the thing for sultry weather,” the clown explains.

  Sweet, transparent, the liquid slides down her throat. One of those immortal old General Electric fans is running, a model from the Second World War. The dressing room is cooled down not only by the air blowing from the fan, but by the humming of its motor.

  “My God, I never thought I could get away from Havana without getting away from Havana,” Salma says, laughing, and making Don Fuco and Victorio laugh. Then, naked as she is, shameless or innocent, indifferent or childlike, she goes to the window and looks with careful admiration at Don Fuco’s telescope.

  Salma’s presence in the ruins of the theater is another blessing for Victorio. Like a young girl, she is always cheerful and ready for any kind of game. Victorio likes to repeat, “I swear on my mother’s grave that happiness exists,” with an ingenuity that time and misfortune cannot bend.

  For Salma, the matter is rather more simple: she feels joy, and all the rest — the reasons, explanations, relations, implications, interrogations — makes no sense.

  Every morning, Salma and Victorio enjoy Don Fuco’s rehearsals, watching him prepare his show. After a long meditation and concentration practice, they see him stand up, walk to center stage, sing, dance, recite poems, and perform acrobatic acts. Don Fuco imitates famous actors such as Buster Keaton, Chaplin, Cantinflas, Jacques Tati, Groucho Marx, Fernandel, and Totó. He manipulates a marionette that is a perfect reproduction of Louis Armstrong, and sings “What a Wonderful World” with the identical voice and explosive smile of the black jazz musician.

  However, the most wonderful thing is that his imitations never attempt to be exact. Don Fuco never ceases to be Don Fuco. When he is doing an imitation, he makes it obvious that he is doing an imitation; he isn’t the other, but someone parodying the other. The result is an int
elligent and very funny appropriation of the other, because he performs a masterly sleight of hand, which is that when he imitates one of the greats of comedy or song, you get the idea that the greats of comedy or song were the ones who had been imitating him. When, for example, he dresses in black and covers his face with unflappable white makeup, you would swear that it was Buster Keaton who had tried pretending to be Don Fuco. The confusion is astounding, entertaining! Some mornings they find themselves watching Greta Garbo in Anna Karenina, Giulietta Masina in La Strada, Lucille Ball in I Love Lucy, and even Rosalind Russell in Auntie Mame. On the stage appears the man whom Don Fuco considers the greatest tenor of the twentieth century, Alfredo Kraus. They see Arturo Toscanini appear, directing an orchestra of puppets. Fred Astaire dances with that elegant air he has of a latter-day marquis, a marquis of dance, and his feet fly over the boards, accompanied by a Ginger Rogers with a wooden body, strings, and a gauze dress. Ella Fitzgerald sings. Juliette Greco and Amalia Rodrigues sing. On a few mornings he attains the dramatic weight of Maria Casares or John Gielgud. Don Fuco climbs onto the stage and is transfigured, rejuvenated; he looks nothing like the little old man who moves slowly and walks with difficulty through the ruins. And how well he handles the marionettes! He picks up a puppet and you can’t tell who is moving whom.

  Evenings, at the moment when the sun begins its slow retreat and the city melts away among shadows and sea mists of improbable colors, Salma and Victorio watch Don Fuco descend like Giselle in her tomb. They watch him leave. And they experience the sharp pangs of nostalgia. They know — they think they know — where he is going. He’ll go to old age homes, hospitals, funeral parlors. He’ll wander the most poverty-stricken streets in the city (and there are lots of poverty-stricken streets, more and more of them). He’ll disappear in among the horrors of the underclass neighborhoods — El Husillo, La Timba, El Romerillo, and Zamora. He’ll walk down the bridge in La Lisa, searching for the specters and güijes that live along the banks of the Río Quibú.