by R. M. Koster
1. On a sun-shot tropic mid-morning Elena Delfi, a gifted and beautiful actress, sat beside the swimming pool of a fine house, chatting with her husband—a man who, in the course of an adventurous career, had been cruelly disabled but who remained the one true love of her life.
2. Confident that she had charmed more difficuit audiences, Elena Delfi concealed her pity—the only emotion she could now feel for the man she once had loved—and set herself to entertaining her invalid husband.
3. After a sound sleep and an extensive toilette, Miss Delfi found it penitentially boring to play a short scene as Florence Nightingale to her paralytic husband.
4. La belle Hélène raised her brilliant green eyes to admire the fine, twelve-point set of antlers she had generously furnished her once proud, now crippled husband.
5. Elena crossed her legs, remembering with joy the pulsing life that had thrust between them hardly a day before, and averted her eyes from the wasted vegetable to whom she was married.
6. Doña Elena regarded the slobbering, sweat-streaked gelding in the wheelchair and, without interrupting her tinkle of small-talk, asked herself how much longer she would be able to endure the disgusting fiction of their marriage.
7. Sex goddess Elena Delfi spent half an hour this morning amusing her basketcase hubby. Since she gave up a week of French tongue jobs to be by his side, it seems true love’s not dead after all.
“You’re not listening, are you, Kiki?”
“Yes, I am.” Pick my chin off my chest. “I’m listening to everything you’re not saying.”
“I’m sorry, caro, I don’t understand.”
“Never mind,” because I won’t say I’m listening to you tell me about your guest on the set, about the soft-voiced, sleepy-eyed muff artist who slurped your hot clam broth and made you squeal, or about having to whore your talent, having to spill your grace on hollow roles in shallow pictures to keep this sack of sallow flesh and dead nerves in dreams of revenge, or about how you can’t divorce me because you feel sorry for me. Sorry for me! When never once did anyone, not Schicksal, nor Kennedy when we met him in San José, nor any bitch scandal writer or faggot actor, even for one second think, much less breathe, that I was the great movie star’s kept boy or pampered plaything. No, I was a man, everyone saw that, and worthy of you or any other woman, living on the top wire with no net below, and now I have to listen to you feel sorry for me!
“What is it, caro?”
“Nothing. Never mind,” because I won’t tell you what I’m listening to you not say. I won’t make cutting remarks the way I did with Marta and Marta did with me. I won’t inform you that you are a whore and a hypocrite, no matter how clear that seems at this moment, any more than I’ll announce that I’m a cripple, though that’s precisely what I am and nothing more, a flabby, shabby, used-up cripple with a voice like hyenas coughing and shriveled little dried-up nuts and a little soft wilted prick like a plucked tulip. I won’t say any of it out loud because I will not live in a tabloid universe. Nor a medical report universe nor a group therapy universe. Not with you, Elena. I was wrong to say anything to Marta, but it wasn’t fatal because Marta believes in facing what social workers call reality. But never with you, Elena, because you and I are different. We make our own reality, and the day I say such things to you, we won’t be able to any more, and I’ll have Jaime put me in the garbage.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes. I felt bad for a minute. Now I’m all right. But let’s go inside. Call Jaime.”
“I’ll take you, caro.” And she dabs her lips with her napkin and smiles her lovely smile and comes and turns me back toward the house while Jaime rises to trail us in, doglike.
23
Elena pushes me up the half-inch rise between the dark gray tiles of the terrace and the light gray tiles of the sala. “Where shall we go, Kiki?”
“Library.”
She wheels me left through the door and up to the card table where, with Marta moving the pieces, I give Alfonso his regular Sunday chess thrashing.
“Turn on the air conditioner, please,” and to Jaime who stands in the doorway: “Traiga La Patria. Y diga a Edilma que me sirva comida aquí.”
“Sí, Kiki.”
“I’m going to eat. Will you feed me?”
“Of course, caro. I’d forgotten all about Phil and the others.” (Elena knows I won’t eat at the table with outsiders present.) “Where are they?”
“Out with Marta. Seeing the city. He hasn’t asked, but tell him no filming in the house. I do freak shows for the elections, not here. He can take our picture at the rally.”
“All right.” She brings a chair up beside me. “But he’s a sensitive boy. I doubt if he’d even suggest it.”
“Nothing’s sacred to an artist with a project or a lover with his pecker up.”
“Or a politician anytime.”
“Correct. But apropos of lovers, does he want to marry Marta?”
“You know about them?”
“I only know they went to bed together last night.”
“And, very paternally, you want to know if his intentions are honorable.”
I say nothing.
“Does it bother you that she has a lover?”
“Of course it bothers me. And pleases me too, if she enjoys him. I care for Marta. So it pleases and bothers me too.”
Elena nods, smiling. “I used to feel something like that. Though you’re more bothered than pleased, while I was usually more pleased than bothered. You were always so full of life whenever you had a new girl. More loving too, a better lover. And I would enjoy the girl through you. That’s the closest I’ve come to making love with women, but I suppose we all have at least a little appetite for that sort of thing. And you were bound to have other women anyway, weren’t you, Kiki? It was annoying at times, but a one-woman man is ridiculous. With Marta I was never really bothered until your campaign when she knew so much more about the politics here than I did and could help you with it and was closer to you than I was. I think if you’d been elected I’d have made you get rid of her. Now everything’s different, and you need her.”
Shake my head. “I don’t need anything. She helps me live. I want her to stay. But I don’t need her. I want lots of things. But I don’t need anything. I’m not pretending. Or playing tough. I’m stating fact. Ñato stole a lot from me, but I get by. I do without. I still know how to want. But I haven’t learned how to need.”
“Not even me?”
“Not even you. I love you, Elena. I want you to dream about me. And smile at me. But I don’t need you. I’m not trying to hurt you. I don’t mean you’re not valuable. You are. You’re a very valuable woman. And the pity is”—make my smile—”I can’t make full use of you any more. When you smile at me, I feel … not crippled. And that’s valuable. I want to keep it. I want to keep you. But if I can’t, I’ll do without.”
Jaime comes in and puts La Patria, folded, on the table in front of me and goes out and shuts the door.
“And if I had a lover? Like Marta?”
“We’ll get to that in a minute. Now we’re talking about her. Does Phil want to marry her?”
“Yes. He even spoke to me about it. He was sleeping with her in Los Angeles, you know.”
“I didn’t know. I was never sensitive to that. Though last night I felt it would be natural for them to go out together. Maybe it’s a faculty that’s developing since my murder.”
“Sensitivity to other people?”
“If you will. Does Marta want to marry him?”
“I think she would marry him if it weren’t for you, Kiki. I think you ought to let her.”
“What do you mean, ‘let’? I’m not stopping her! She can marry tomorrow If she wants, and I’ll wish her luck.”
“You don’t tell her to go.”
“Why should I? She can stay if she wants. I want her to stay. She helps me live.”
“What do you give her?”
“I don’t know.
Ask her. I must give her something, or she wouldn’t stay. It could be that she loves me.”
“Or feels sorry for you.”
“No, Elena. She doesn’t feel sorry for me. She’s told me that. And I wouldn’t allow it. Not from you either, by the way. It wouldn’t work. Sometimes, for a minute, I think maybe you feel sorry for me. Then it passes. As long as I act correctly you won’t feel sorry for me. You can feel sorry for what happened. To me and all of us. That it was a bad break. But you can’t feel sorry for me. Unless I act badly. And if that happens … well, there’s a cure for that.”
“So you’d keep Marta with you?”
“If she wants to stay. I’ll keep whatever I can keep and get whatever I can get.”
“The same as always.”
“Exactly the same. Inside I’m exactly the same.”
“Without giving anything.”
“I give what I give. I never thought about it before. Lately I’ve thought about it. And it seems I must give something. I saved Jaime’s life, but that’s not why he serves me. Before he served me because it made life interesting. There must still be something of that, or he’d leave. I don’t need him either. Though it would be hard without him. I don’t beg or whine. He doesn’t feel sorry for me. He knows how I lived, how I still live. That when you live that way, what happened to me isn’t surprising. A bad break, yes. A bad break that Ñato didn’t kill me with his first shot. Or miss me completely. Or give me a minor wound. Or a stupid mistake on my part. To underestimate him. But not something surprising, something absurd. Not like an insurance man paralyzing himself by slipping in the bathtub. So I must give Jaime something. And Marta. And you.”
“You don’t understand devotion, do you, Kiki?” She looks away.
“Of course I understand it. That’s what I give you. All of you. Someone to be devoted to. And memories.”
“And if that isn’t enough?” Eyebrows raised and light smile. Perfectly calm, as though we were speculating about the weather, not my life or death, and that’s why I love you, Elena, because you always tested me and keep testing me now, just as though I were still whole. Woman is a safe harbor, but also a test. “If that isn’t enough?”
“Too bad for me. Open the paper.” She spreads it on the table. “Can you read it?”
“Nuovi corni per Kiki,” she translates.
“All right. Inside it talks about you and some Frenchman. I’m not going to discuss it with you. It’s beneath discussion. Just the kind of filth they print in this country.”
“And in Italy and in England and in the States.”
“Yes. I show it to you for two reasons. First, so that you will know what people are reading about you and me this morning.”
“It explains the look Edilma gave me.”
At which Edilma comes in with my lunch, a bowl of what we call huacho and the Italians risotto, white bread to mush in it, fruit, and ice water with my glass straw. She doesn’t look at Elena, who lifts the paper so she can set down the tray.
“Te doy la comida?”
“La señora me la dará, gracias.”
And Edilma goes out, still without a glance at Elena.
“She makes me feel very welcome, your Edilma.”
“I’m sorry, Elena. She’s old. And very simple. And devoted.”
“To the master.”
“I’ll say something to her later. But the second reason for showing you the paper. Is by way of telling you. That I know that what I give you may not be enough.”
“It is, Kiki.”
“Good. I believe you. But you asked me a question. About if you had a lover.”
“We were talking about Marta going to bed with Phil, and you said it bothered you, and I felt jealous.”
“All right. That pleases me. You being jealous. Now.”
“I was always jealous, caro, but I’m just as strong as you are. I certainly wouldn’t let it get the better of me. You were going to have your little adventures. Had you ever preferred one of them to me, it would simply have meant that I’d been wrong about you, that you had no taste, and I would have left you. But I was always jealous.”
“Good. But you asked a question. And will get an answer. Which is that you’re free. Like a widow. If you remain faithful, it’s from devotion, like a widow. And for memories. But you’re different from Marta.”
“Because I’m your wife?”
“No. Because you’re my woman. I can give Marta to Phil. For a night. Or to marry him if she wants. And wish her luck. But not you. I can’t give you. So if you were to have a lover, I wouldn’t see you again. That’s not a threat. As a threat it’s ridiculous. It’s a statement. An answer to your question. You’re free. But if a widow takes a new man, she shouldn’t be hanging around her dead husband’s tomb.”
“I can do without too, Kiki.”
“Good. It’s for you to decide. But I’m glad you decide that way. Sometimes I think you should have love. That I should tell you, ‘Take a man.’ But as soon as I think it, I know it would be wrong. I can’t tell you that. It wouldn’t be me. And you probably wouldn’t like it.”
“No, Kiki, I wouldn’t. Don’t ever tell me that.”
“I won’t. It’s a bad break for both of us. Eh, Elena?”
“Yes, caro. But you and I don’t have to talk about these things. Come,” she says, smiling, “let me give you your rice.”
24
Restful to be fed. Pleasures of infancy with a kind mamá spooning me warm rice and smiling at my coos and gurgles. And my mind has been such a good dog, not fouling the rug after all, I must let it out again. To sniff the past. So many exciting odors sprayed about, and in a ramble clocked at thought-speed whole seasons can be inhaled between swallows. Romps so merrily when unleashed. From soggy flesh which must be fed the same kind of pap now being reverently prepared for Alejo. By a dozen women in a dozen towns, for he can’t chew meat either any more, and who knows where or when he might feel hungry along the way back to power? Prayerful fingers stirring in the lentils. Grace and blessings conferred on the happy hamlet where he deigns to eat. And he’s coming! Jesus promised to come a second time and hasn’t kept it yet, but Alejo Sancudo has already risen twice and is going to make it three.
When he came to power the second time, Tinieblas lay before him breathless, like a naked girl, expecting rape or romance. What followed was a conjugal domesticity equally poor in agonies and orgasms. It seemed that Alejo had decided to settle down. It was enough to be tucked in with the country; he didn’t have to make it moan or twitch. Of course, he reconstituted the entire civil service, removing opponents, installing tinieblistas, and canceled all government contracts, redistributing them among his friends, and petitioned the President of the United States for revision of the Reservation treaty, and served notice on Hirudo Oil and Galactic Fruit and Yankee and Celestial Energy that Tinieblas would have to have a share of their profits, but he allowed employees to beg and contractors to bribe him, and made no objection when the President of the United States waited seven thoughtful months before replying that treaty revision was awkward at the moment, and, in the case of the foreign companies, settled for nominal contributions to his Panamanian bank in lieu of larger payments to the Tinieblan treasury. In short, he acted like any other president, so that it appeared he had decided to adapt to custom and tradition rather than make the country over in his own image.
True, several months after his inauguration he began to act bizarrely. When the new university campus, a work begun under Lucho Gusano, was dedicated, Alejo gave one of the buildings to Doktor Henker, making ours the only university in the world with a faculty of astrology. Then he proposed a law requiring couples to submit horoscopes with their applications for marriage licenses. He was applauded when, on the first anniversary of his inauguration, he told the Chamber of Deputies that Tinieblas was not destined to remain a rest room and a brothel for foreign troops and that he would take steps to compel the foreigner to cease defiling Tinieblan sovereignt
y, but the steps he took were to send to Haiti for a wax effigy of Harry Truman and a technician to instruct Tinieblans in its manipulation. Word of this leaked out, along with rumors that the same Haitian had been seen in Tinieblas at the time of the sudden deaths of Olmedo Avispa and Fernando Comején. People began to talk about the old Alejo and to fear or hope for a return to the heady days of his first administration, yet before anything actually happened, Lalo Marañon told Alejo about Angela. The new mood dissolved, the horoscope law was tabled in the chamber, the Haitian was sent home. Hopes and fears went unrealized; there were no uniforms, no reprisals, no decrees. And in the two years Angela was with him Alejo grew steadily more mellow, so that Lazarillo Agudo could write: “The forces of evolution are irresistible. Even Don Alejo progresses, from whoring after strange gods to gadding after strange whores.”
There is a gland in him that drips acid on his brain, distorting his perceptions until the world mirrors his own chaos and the monsters of his mind, but Angela drained his evil humors and pumped the pus from his soul. All week long the death-smelling distillations seeped higher around his cortex, but now he had Angela to bleed them away. No other woman had served this need, but Angela had the knack of transformation and could flesh his fantasies, incarnating all the objects of his hate and terror for him to subjugate and defile. Through Angela he committed necrophiliac pollution on his father’s body, so fearsome once but now pruned of manhood. Or she became a black man, the embodiment of his own negroid genes, whose lips he forced and fouled. She was the Tinieblan people, squirming and whinnying under him, so why put them in uniform? And why torment a man with voodoo pins when you can sodomize him in fantasy the weekend long? And then, flushed pure of poison, he would lie in the thickening twilight of afternoons notched by the roll of surf and the cries of sea birds, with Angela beside him, now a daughter, listening in cuddled reverence to stories of his youth, now a mother, scolding him gently and drawing him, warm with shame, into the safety of her body.