San Isidro Labrador,
ni quites el agua ni pongas el sol…
Saint Isidore the Farmer,
don’t take away the water
and don’t bring out the sun…
and she’d turn to face the lightning, so much lightning, and she’d jump to the sound of the thunder, so much thunder, and I’d imitate her, running, dancing, singing under the rain. I relived the glorious thunderstorms of my childhood with my mother again. And it was like I could taste the pineapple stinging my mouth; I was sitting down and looking out at the countryside at my grandmother’s house — my grandmother lived in Bauta, in La Minina, you know? — at the point in the village where the houses are giving way to savanna, to corrals where they raise pigs, next to a little pond with more frogs than water and the dirty water that was there was completely covered over by malangueta lilies. I’d sit down in front of the fence, in the grass, to eat pineapple while I watched horses and cows grazing: the cozy feeling of lying under the yellow acacia and seeing how the wind makes the flower petals fall onto me. Ay, Victorio, you, tell me, haven’t you ever woken up to the smell of coffee that your mother was filtering? I don’t mean coffee from one of those Italian coffee makers, I mean pouring a jarful of boiled water through the coffee in a woolen filter. The intense smell would wake me up; I’d be half-asleep, watching my mother filtering the coffee, and I’d feel like the luckiest girl in the world, because my mother would also notice that her little girl had opened her eyes, she’d come over to me and tell me, ‘The sun is out — if my baby girl has opened her eyes, the sun is out.’ Oh, and another thing I loved to do, you: go upstairs at night onto the rooftop of my building, where the old Van Dyck photography studio had been, you’ve seen the rooftop; I’d lie down there on the terra-cotta flagstones — I knew that everybody else was absorbed in the nonsense they put on television, no one knew where I was, nobody was spying on me — and lying on the rooftop up there, exposed to the land breeze that was blowing toward the bay not far away, I’d devote myself to watching the stars. Knowing that those shining points were always there calmed me, made me feel safe, made me feel protected by some force larger than myself, larger than all of us put together, and whenever someone tried to burst my bubble — you know how people can never abide the happiness of others — by attempting to give me scientific explanations, telling me that in all probability some of those stars are already dead, and that all that’s left is their light traveling through interminable space, instead of making me feel sad that would make me even happier — what am I saying! — much, much happier. I didn’t explain to you: at the time, and even now, I imagined that stars were really little people from distant worlds, and the only testimony we had of them was their light, something like flashes of souls that had managed to cover millions of light-years, and on the other side of the universe, on the other edge, those little people could see us shining just as brightly, like stars, and would you believe it, you: I believed that the brightest stars corresponded to the happiest beings? So for them to tell me that what I was seeing was light from a person who was dead, that was the best way of proving to me that eternity was possible; and I logically concluded — you can’t deny my logic — that if I was seeing the brilliance of someone who no longer belonged to the world of the living, then someone else would see my own brilliance when I had left this world. So, far from frightening me with their scientific opinions, they made me even more certain of the twinkling that would be the proof of my immortality, do you follow me, Triumphito?”
She pauses briefly to stretch her arms in lazy happiness.
“The fact is,” she then exclaims, talking like a madman, which is the only way one can speak logically, “that I loved to enter a darkened room and have a man waiting for me on the bed. Listen, learn: men who are waiting on the bed while a woman takes off her clothes are worse than caged beasts. I know the sensation I stirred in them, that tormenting feeling of being overwhelmed by the pleasure that will soon arrive but hasn’t arrived yet: it perturbs them; it kills them; they don’t realize, they never realize (what brutes!) that waiting for pleasure is the only true pleasure, because the other side, satisfying their pleasure, is always pretty disappointing, you; so the real pleasure is the pleasure of waiting, don’t you agree, Triumpho? At least that’s what we think, those of us who haven’t really known the nature of pleasure. And that man, waiting for you, naked, nice and naked, falls onto you with a desperation that turns into joy. Ay, Mother of the Word, how I loved to lie down on the grass and let a boy caress me! Triumphito, how I loved to see their faces, surprised to find themselves with a girl who was ready to satisfy them! They’d kiss me clumsily, caress me like they were touching fancy furniture or the Virgin’s mantle, they’d bite my little tits — sometimes they’d bite too hard, they were new at it! But guess what, it didn’t hurt me, I didn’t care. I loved to see their joy, see them half bewildered and half boastful. I’d say things to them, the things they wanted to hear; and let me tell you, spreading my legs to the open air in front of those classmates of mine was quite a defining experience. Most of them had never before seen the wet opening that was throbbing for them, waiting for them, and when they entered my body as if I weren’t me, I’d observe their expressions, halfway between pain and supreme pleasure — none of these memories is important at all. I heard the hinges creak on the door to the dressing rooms, I saw my mother walk in, full of light, like a saint, and it was like all those little moments of happiness had come together into a single magnificent ball of lightning, and the most magnificent part of it: I saw my mother’s face in all its details.”
“For you, it fills you with happiness to find your memories; I’d like to be rid of mine.”
“I don’t understand you. Memories are just about the best things in life.”
“My sweet Salma, listen: a moment ago a remembrance came that I am always running from; a jarring memory that keeps returning and returning, which is a characteristic of jarring memories.
“I saw myself as a child, in the hangars of Agricultural Fumigation. It was morning, nice and early; the sun was shining like it does in Chartrand’s paintings, a timid kind of sun that ennobles landscapes, a sun that isn’t yet setting them on fire, and the grass and the trees were still endeavoring to conserve some of the night cool; work hadn’t started yet, El Moro was getting his Fokker ready to fly, ‘the apple of my eyes,’ as he called it; he and a mechanic were checking the fuel, the engines, all the mysterious things that have to be checked in planes that are about to take off. I always climbed up into the cockpit; I’d sit there and imagine that I was flying around worlds that I’m not sure now exist. I knew that I couldn’t touch any of the controls, any of the buttons, but that didn’t keep me from flying. El Moro climbed in, I remember, and sat me on his lap, and I remember that he smelled of starch and clean sheets and that his breath was as fresh as if he had been chewing on peppermint leaves. He hugged me against his chest and said, ‘Today we’re going to fly, Lieutenant. I’m going to show you my palace and the mule named Cicero, and I’m going to show you your palace, the one that belongs to you, because among the ruins we’ll put out some white smoke, and the towers of your palace will come up through that smoke — you want to fly with me today?’ I didn’t answer, I didn’t have to, he knew how much I wanted to fly, and I think he also secretly knew that I would have gone to the ends of the earth with him. I don’t think the Algerian was too far from knowing the fascination he inspired in that boy. He knew it and he didn’t know it; that’s how these things always are: he didn’t know that for me he was the symbol of all human beauty, and at the same time he did know it. He played on that, without intending to. He paid attention to me the way you would to a little boy, the way you would to a little girl. He wanted to be my friend, and without realizing it he made me fall for him like a secret lover. But there was Papá Robespierre to protect me from danger; my father stood next to the cockpit and shouted, ‘Hey, Moro, you gotta go now, it’s getting late,�
� and I passed from El Moro’s hands to my father’s, who set me down on the embankment that served as a landing strip. El Moro put on his helmet and started the engines. While my father and I were walking away toward the hangars, the plane glided down the strip, took off, did a few pirouettes in the sky — El Moro couldn’t help playing those sorts of games. I saw the plane turning loops, as always; this time Papa Robespierre went pale and started shouting, I know that there were sirens wailing, the ambulance that was always sitting unused at the hangars took off, and a fire truck even went out on a salvation mission without knowing where or why it was going, and no matter how hard I close my eyes, Salma, no matter how hard I shake my head, as if I could shoo away memories like flies, I see the plane, or rather, I see the flames, the big flames that had forever overtaken the plane of El Moro.
“El Moro disappeared together with his plane, and all at once I learned a lot of things that life has later done nothing but confirm.”
*
“My poor darling,” says Salma, moved. She kisses him on the forehead. “That’s over and done, you, what’s past is past.”
“The past is never past, my girl; that’s a lie: time doesn’t move forward, time is an ill-willed whirlwind that keeps spinning around in place.”
“Look, don’t get grandiose on me. Come, follow me, I’m going to show you something.”
Salma takes Victorio by the arm. She leads him to the stage.
Where a large dining table is set for a sumptuous meal. The Bruges lace tablecloth is splendid. Candelabras with spiraling candles and trembling flames. Limoges china. Silver dinnerware. Diaphanous crystal glasses from Bohemia.
Don Fuco welcomes them. Don Fuco spreads his arms. In silence, Salma and Victorio stand behind the chairs that have been assigned to them, waiting for the old clown to raise his empty cup and tells them what he wants to toast. The clown merely laughs. His forthright laughter seems to be sufficient. Ceremoniously, without a single word, they all lift up their empty glasses. They sit down. They begin to laugh. No one pours white wine, or red wine, or even water into the Bohemia glasses. No one carries in any platters of food. They sit there at a sumptuously set table on which there is no food nor drink. They see the bottoms of their soup bowls, where plump, rosy nymphs, pursued by lusty satyrs, run cheerfully among absurd trees. They can’t stop laughing. Sometimes they seem to hear applause. In the middle of laughing, Salma manages to say that the applause is really the beating of all the doves’ and bats’ wings. Between guffaws, Victorio explains, “No, no, don’t you realize? It’s the rain.” More calmly, Don Fuco asserts, “Don’t doubt it: it is applause, old applause imprisoned between these walls.”
Applause, old applause imprisoned between these walls. At times they hear the motifs of an aria. An extraordinary voice resounds between the devastated walls. Melodies from The Magic Flute, Aïda, or Cecilia Valdés. The despairing voice of La Lupe turns into the joyous grandeur of Celia Cruz. Lecuona’s piano, Bola de Nieve’s loud baritone. Edith Piaf, Elena Bourke, Sarah Vaughan. Now and then, lights, beams of light fall in different directions, and there is no telling where they have come from.
Naked, his body painted white, the clown walks across a tightrope that one imagines is strung from one corner to the other of the orchestra pit. To keep his balance, he raises a many-colored umbrella in his right hand, while in his left he manipulates the marionette that reproduces himself, naked and gleaming white. He sings. His lovely tenorino voice intones an odd melody, which Victorio does not recognize. He leaps, and his resplendent figure seems to remain fixed in the darkness of the ruinous theater.
Victorio thinks he can hear the applause. He pays no attention. It is, clearly, old applause imprisoned between the walls. And the tightrope. What tightrope? Where is the tightrope?
Giselle’s tomb. Labyrinthine hallways. False openings. Half-hidden doors. Holes hollowed out by Don Fuco the clown.
Victorio emerges into the Havana afternoon. He actually feels that he has done the opposite: that he has left behind the Havana afternoon and gained access to the ersatz afternoon of some variety theater. A cloud-covered afternoon. No rain falls. The heat is therefore magnified as if in a cauldron. Everything, even life itself, seems to be on hold, waiting for the storm. Beset by the humid, sweltering heat, and by the flies that this suffocating weather brings out, old women carry their stools or boxes out to the sidewalk and sit there fanning themselves with copies of Granma that no one has read, seeking some stray breeze from the north, some breeze mistakenly blowing their way; you can see the befuddlement and annoyance on the old women’s faces: no one ever gets used to this humid heat, to the wall of dirty water that is this heat, nor can the passing years make a habit of this inferno. Truth be told, you could die of old age at a hundred and ten, still hoping that the window blinds might rustle from a puff of cool wind, like the ones that God sends to regions better regarded, better loved by Him.
Victorio has decided that the theater is the place for him. Said just like that, in all solemnity, as if you could hear the drums rolling when he pronounces this categorical sentence: “The theater is the place for me.” True, like everyone who decides to respond to a calling, such as priests, seamen, ascetics, nurses, artists, and suicides, Victorio feels that he should first tie up a few of the loose ends that he has left out there, where life develops (if it really does develop) in perfect and habitual boredom.
He has gone walking around Havana. He has done the rounds of his favorite palaces: the lovely white mansion dating from the turn of the century, classical, conventional, yet with daringly modernist elements on the balconies and windows; the Casa de la Araucaria, with a robust Araucaria excelsa pine tree in the garden, built by the Italianist scholar Aurelio Boza Masvidal; the marvelous house with which Juan Pedro Baró hoped to prove his love for Catalina Lasa, the first art deco house in Havana, with a garden designed by Forestier (whose name was never more aptly employed) and built with marble from Carrara, ornaments by Lalique, sand from the Nile.
He makes the rounds of these palaces in a way he has never known before. He doesn’t feel exactly anxious. He covets no ownership. These exceptional Havana palaces do not awaken his envy or his self-pity. His admiration remains intact, but he no longer suffers from seeing them as the spaces that he desires but cannot attain. As if now the palaces were somehow his.
He returns to Calle Galiano, to the corner where the building in which he was so unlucky once stood. The building has been demolished. Now they’ve begun collecting the rubble. A security cordon blocks it off. Several cranes pick up the stones and let them fall, with a tremendous racket and columns of smoke, into the dump trucks.
Victorio stops to watch, pretending to be just another person. He makes his way through the crowd of spectators who are standing behind the barricades. Emotionless, he looks at the steps from the old staircase. The window frames. The shattered panes. The remains of skylights and arches. An armless Saint Barbara. Pieces of tables and rocking chairs. Several washbasins. The headless Venus from the staircase landing. An iron bedframe. Stoves and clocks. Bathtubs covered with dirt. In a few spots wildflowers are already springing up.
Victorio can see Mema Turné sitting on a primitive pine chair, wearing her black Quaker-Marxist dress with ample neck and long sleeves. The dress makes her sweat desperately. On her sleeve she wears a red armband that says public order. On her bald head, a straw hat tied to her chin with a kerchief, red as well. Victorio hates once more her thin mustache and her suction-cup eyes. Her outrageous baritone martin voice repeats, monotonous and authoritarian, “Keep it moving, keep it moving, no one’s allowed to stand here.” In spite of Mema’s intimidating tone, the spectators do stop in front of the protective barricades as if they don’t hear her. Victorio can’t resist the temptation: he picks up a smallish rock and tosses it at the old woman. He manages to hit her in the leg. The old woman jumps to her feet, flicks out her spotted tongue, and yells, “Go ahead, gusanos, worms! Attack, cowards! The full weight
of History will fall on you, the people united will never be defeated.” The spectators applaud.
Distant Palaces Page 21