The Chase

by Alejo Carpentier

  No one was surprised to see him appear at the wake, since the old lady had worked from time to time in wealthy houses. “They found the key to the terrace,” her niece announced with pleasure when she noticed that an unexpected current of air was moving the candle flames. “Please accept my deepest sympathy,” someone said, thinking that if a white man was attending a wake for a black, dressed in a dark-blue suit despite the heat, it was because some distant family relationship linked him to the deceased. He looked at himself over the top of the coffin in the mirror above the console table. His face was so emaciated, so free of the fat that had accumulated in it from heavy drinking over the course of those days when he had no work and was trying to forget the work he’d done, that he felt emboldened by the disguise he’d discovered in his own body. He looked at himself and looked again without finding he resembled himself. Nights of torment had put a deep crease in his cheeks, caused his chin to jut out, given an odd fixity to his eyes, which were shadowed by his hair, hair that was too long and which, because it was too long, he combed in an unusual way. He found something so new in his expression that someone crossing his path in a poorly lighted place might—perhaps—doubt it was he. Besides, his dark glasses, which for him had become a kind of professional tool, also helped him. He gave thanks for the pain he’d suffered during his days of confinement and also for the hunger at the outset, holding them up to the One he felt to be more and more present, as if He, too, were leaning against the Belvedere’s handrail, sublime in His glory but with compassion for mankind. He noticed with pleasure in the mirror that reflected his new image that the relatives, one after another, were straggling out to the terrace. There they breathed in the slight breeze of a night of very low clouds, tinted ocher above the hill by the glare of lights shining at the University—possibly the floodlights in the stadium or the Patio of Columns—while they remarked on the disrespect of the person up above who, so close to death, was still playing records. It wasn’t dance music, to be sure; but music is only played out of happiness. When they talked about dispatching the Soldier, with his air of authority, to demand greater solemnity in the presence of the deceased, a ship’s siren made all of them forget what had perhaps stopped playing. They talked about pilots, buoys, and swells, and minute hands were synchronized on a bet because someone asserted that the light on the lighthouse was turning more slowly than the regulations allowed. Returning from his trip through the mirror, the man who was now lean turned toward the door that the others were using his stakes and planks to keep open, because, having been shut for so long, it tended to close by itself, pushed shut by the habit of its thick, studded hinges. Only two old ladies, their heads covered by white handkerchiefs, were left in the room, praying over the beads of a single rosary, so he slid his pistol over his hip, where he usually wore it, put his hand on the railing, and slowly walked down the spiral staircase, whose creaking steps had come to speak to him in the clear language of footfalls. He crossed the patio of the Academy of Style where, despite the dead neighbor, the girls were busily dressing the two dummies—one fat, the other thin—in cutout sheets of newsprint bristling with pins. The vision of the avenue at street level seemed so new to him that he hesitated before stepping over the threshold. Above, the Belvedere, its corner columns crowned with rosettes. Under the harsh light, the poplars painted wide shadows isolated one from another by the surrounding brightness of the sidewalk. After putting on his glasses, whose dark lenses—made for the sun, used at night—made him more hidden as he slipped from shadow to shadow, speeding up, sinking his face between his lapels whenever he walked under a light. The only money he had was that new bill, tossed to him as some kind of charity in the last house from which he’d been expelled, on the afternoon when a bullet-riddled column had saved him from death. It wasn’t enough for him to make the trip to his father’s tailor shop. Besides, everyone in Sancti-Spiritus would find out about his arrival: the veteran who sold fruit next to the Obelisk of the National Heroes knew him; the anise-bread seller knew him; the barbers who saw everyone pass by through the flutter of their gossipy scissors. He thought about eating. But at that early hour the cheap restaurants would be too full of people who would stare at him—and nothing was so fearful to him as a stare now that he had thrown himself into the city. Walking from shadow to shadow, he reached the end of the trees and passed into the world of columns. Columns with blue and white stripes, with railings connecting them: a double gallery of portals along that royal roadway whose Fountain of Neptune was adorned with tritons that looked like wild dogs pasted over with campaign posters. Following the paint smeared on the houses, he moved from ocher to ash, from green to mulberry, passing from the portal with a broken coat of arms over it to the portal adorned with filthy cornucopias. From the corners there stretched forward straight streets whose asphalt was tinged with a leaden blue in the light of street lamps that rocked gently in the breeze in a blur of bedazzled insects. There the parish church was sleeping, a plaster-cast Gothic structure—repainted so often that its fleurons looked as if they’d been dipped in molasses—with weeds sprouting from the roof tiles and grass growing on the awnings, across the street from the store that sold magnets, lightning-struck stones, and hands made of jet, used to protect children from illness and the evil eye. Beyond, there appeared a vine on top of a ruinous masonry wall, next to the vast tobacco warehouse asleep in the aromatic half-light. Under the arcades of an old Spanish palace lay beggars wrapped up in papers among tin cans and broken machinery, suffering bad dreams, asleep in their own urine. Hurrying, the hunted man went from column shadow to column shadow, knowing he was close to the market, where at this hour mountains of pumpkins, green plantains, and yellow ears of corn were piling up near cages through whose bars the turkeys would stretch their heads that looked like dusty tulips. Beyond that was the street of the pawnbrokers, always ablaze with light as if for a soirée, with their wicker chairs hung from the ceiling above a chaos of pendulum clocks, consoles, and dressers, from which would emerge, as if it had gone off course, the neck of some double bass or a polychrome vase. And, beyond the mannequins in bridal gowns and communion suits, beyond the bronze of the funeral parlor, where the napping watchman rested his head against a coffin, was the marble counter covered with fish scales standing among brass pots of bile, tripes, and shells. Even farther back stood the barbershop with the gold-framed mirrors. Taking a detour, he passed among the smells of polenta, jerked beef, pungent, pickled things, and piles of salt cod, in order to avoid the lights of the café with its steaming coffeepots at whose doors he had been arrested that night. Finally he reached the corner of a dark street where windows called in hushed voices, and raised a door knocker which, at that moment, was his only chance. Behind the door, Estrella’s footsteps unhurriedly answered.

  “What happened, did you lose your way?” she asked as she opened the door, looking him over with ironic curiosity while the sleepy dog, trained not to bark at strangers, merely sniffed at him. “I just got back from a trip,” he said to explain to a person who had recently praised his expensive, flashy clothing why he was wearing a suit inappropriate to the season and a shirt that was wrinkled from being washed under the faucet on the terrace. “Sunglasses?” she teased, plucking them off with one finger and comically modeling them: “Everything’s black. Is it a fad?” “I haven’t eaten yet,” he answered, looking toward the kitchen shadowed by the hanging branches of the pomegranate tree. The dog had stretched out at the far end of the patio, next to a mound of leftovers that was so abundant there could be nothing left in the pots. Estrella brought a bottle that still contained some liquor. When he reached her door, the man had been on the point of instantly entrusting himself to the only person who could help him tonight. But now the alcohol he drank quickly made him consider his situation more calmly. He was hidden once again. The house she’d closed off behind his back covered and concealed him. There were many hours yet before dawn. He had before him ample and propitious time. He knew he could count on Es
trella. But before saying a word, he ought to create once again the climate of intimacy his two weeks of despair had broken down. She liked his slow and prolonged way of possessing her. He took her by the hand, drawing her toward the bed. “Wait,” she said, putting out the light and sliding in next to him after removing her lipstick with a cleansing tissue and covering the statue of the Virgin with a cloth. But he had fallen into a boundless bed. The softness of the pillow after his having tossed and turned on the worn-out straw mattress that had holes in it so big his shoulder would go right through them; the liquor, which left his body without bones, soft, as if made of warm wax; the relief of putting down his heavy pistol, which he put on top of his clothes; the wide, hot breast next to his cheek; the woman’s arms, more lullaby now than incitement: it all made him settle, slowly, delightfully, his arms and legs slack, into the great lap of a sleep at long last possible . . . When he opened his eyes the lights were turned back on. Estrella, her back toward him, had just put on a blouse with green ribbons on the collar. In the moon of the mirror, she looked at him with more indifference than spite. “Come here,” he said. “You won’t be able to,” she answered, putting on her lipstick. Knowing it would be easier to get her to take her clothes off again than to take off her lipstick, he sat up on the edge of the bed and made a gesture of rage. He was not going to allow this woman he had possessed so many times, whose professional insensibility, he could say with masculine pride, he had overwhelmed, who had moaned with pleasure under his weight, look at him with a bored expression after having lain at his side, as if she were giving him up as a lost cause. Now she was opening the street door, calling in the cat, which in a silent jump abandoned the roof and began snooping around with a flick of its nervous tail. In the face of this indifference from a woman who always begged him to stay all night, the man exploded. How could his flesh be aflame at that moment when all of him was nothing but a vast clamor of hunger and fear! And now he was talking, breathlessly, needing to talk, to talk himself hoarse, after so much time without talking. Estrella closed the doors again. She huddled on the other side of the bed, listening with terrified attention. Suddenly, in a blaze of horrifying illumination, the implacable chain of events became real for her. Now she remembered the grisly newspaper photographs, although she had not seen in his stupid cowardice at that time the beginning of all this. The pictures now came back to her through his words, the origin of the fear, solitude, and hunger he had suffered in the distant house where they were now holding a wake for an old woman folded into her box, dead, with her guts still waiting for what he had stolen from her. As she absorbed the abominable impact of what was said as a way to purge her mind of the men from the Inquisition, she heard the word she usually applied to herself when she openly bragged about what was plainly true, as if that word were being echoed back from a deep well. She did not remember when she had begun to like sitting on men’s laps and smelling their shirts redolent of sweat and tobacco, knowing that tomorrow was secure when two hard arms sought each other out below her waist to hold her more tightly. She spoke of her body in the third person, as if, below her shoulder blades, it were an alien and energetic presence independently gifted with the powers that won her the solicitude and largess of men. That presence took instantaneous effect, as if through magic, inspiring prolonged diligence in men from different social classes, where life had other rhythms and other finalities. One man couldn’t manage to explain what it was he studied; another was expecting something; yet another was longing for something. She was immobility and waiting, a known place among so many men of unknown domicile, who seemed to materialize when they turned the corner of her street and then just dissolved back into the city until the next time. Her head had a secondary role in the surprising life of a flesh that every man praised in similar terms, men rendered identical by the same gestures and appetites, a flesh she put on a pedestal and glorified as something unconquered, something that could only be possessed with great difficulty. She arrogated to herself the rights of indifference, frigidity, disdain—always demanding, although it might occur in silence when the bearing of the visitor or the insights of his arts seemed to justify an egoistic yielding of herself that inverted their roles, making the man act out the role of the woman casually possessed. Her body remained innocent of the notion of sin. She referred to It, separating it from herself, personifying it even more when she alluded to the. place that constituted its center, as she might speak of a very valuable object, kept in another room in the house. “We sin with our heads,” she had heard in a sermon which she had only half listened to once when she’d noticed that a few drops of holy water caused black stains to run from the lace of her mantilla, given to her as the genuine article. But her head had little to reproach her for, since she did what she did in accordance with the only work that would earn her decent wages. She was correct in her business dealings, reliable in her arrangements, generous where the needs of others were concerned or in the case of a woman like herself left destitute. Even the women on her street who had been married by the Church called her more a lady than some who pretended to chastity, using her as an example in their defamatory gossip. She bragged about her frankness, calling herself, for that very reason, by the most appropriate word. But now, as she learned about his fear, his hunger, his agonized solitude, the word became swollen with abjection. Now that she knew it was no longer five letters that came to her mouth, it was the ignoble Word, charged with purulence and lapidation; the insult that had resounded since time immemorial in jails, latrines, poorhouses, and vomitories. A sign, made to divert a threat of minor importance—a threat that if carried out would have had more impact on her comfort than her person—had made a whore of her. A whore, not because of the acts of her flesh, but because of the disloyal behavior that respectable people, women with only one man, usually attributed to those in her condition. This time she had sinned with her head, and these were the evils unleashed by her sin: the Word was shouted to her by voices from Hell, above the innocence of her body, shaken with horror . . . When the man, sweaty, panting, protested in louder and louder tones that he was sincere, told her about his prayers and entreaties, about the portentous news of God in his life, Estrella broke into sobs. It was he now who took her in his arms, laying her beside him. Before putting out the light, he removed her lipstick with a piece of cleansing tissue.

  This time Estrella did not put on her lipstick. She cleansed her face with alcohol, her back turned toward him. Below her thick hair, bristling with combs, her eyes, now devoid of makeup, sank into her skin, which was lusterless, rather muddy, the complexion people have who grow up in charcoal smoke. From an armoire, she took out the black dress she wore to visit the Stations of the Cross during Holy Week and the dyed-black shoes she kept for sympathy visits and wakes. Chewing a crust he had dipped into the cold sauce left in a pot—all the leftovers had been thrown to the dog—the man felt an unexpected relief after possessing her. “I needed that even more than food,” he thought. And he again described the house, emphasizing its details. The woman didn’t know that distant part of town, through which she’d passed only a few times on her way back from the zoo, where she had been astounded by the exotic animals. Besides, everything outside her own parochial space was as alien to her as the other side of Havana Bay or beyond the ancient fortresses that guarded the port. She would talk about neighborhoods with names like Orfila, El Nazareno, or Palatino as if they were remote cities in whose streets a person might lose his way and wander for days. The routes she knew went from church to church, when she followed the Stations of the Cross during Holy Week. It was she who was visited, almost never visiting anyone herself. For that reason he had to paint a clear picture for her: at the intersection, it was the corner with the garden and the tall fence. Two floors: the entryway had a green awning and rocking chairs for children. There were white-painted statues standing in the beds of gladiolas and daisies. From the street she would be able to see the statues: a woman wearing a veil with an apple in her
hand (“Eve?” she asked); the other one had a lance and a helmet, like a Soldier (in ancient times, women fought like men: her grandfather had told her so). And two lions, one on each side of the entrance, each with a black ring in its mouth (just like the ones on the monument that stood at the seashore, the one with the eagle on top of the columns). Visitors were not supposed to use the knocker (as they do here); instead, they were to pull a little chain that hung on the right side of the door. No one rang twice (as visitors do here); they were expected to wait a bit, every time. (Did he think she was totally ignorant of good manners?) She had to hand the letter to the Exalted Personage. And demand an answer, without letting herself be put off. In order to compromise him still further, she should pretend to know all about the Arrangement and speak in a courteous but firm tone, that of a woman ready to wait all ‘light if necessary. Should the other grow impatient, she should adopt an ambiguous, ironic, disturbing tone, that of someone who knows a lot. If she met with resistance about being received; if the butler in white went out and came back, inviting her to come back tomorrow, she should talk about a disaster, without going into details: bad news opens doors. If the Exalted Personage had gone out, she should remain in the small waiting room decorated in the Spanish style. (Could she understand what he was saying about the carved chest, the two suits of armor, and the gauntlets on the hilts of the broadswords?) And if they didn’t let her stay there, she should wait outside, next to the gate. Under the poplar there was a bench well known to those who came to solicit favors. Of the four corners at the intersection, it was the one with the garden and the tall fence . . . When Estrella turned toward him, her face clean, dressed in mourning, with no jewelry except a religious medal hanging around her neck on a thin chain, he almost laughed because she looked like one of the schoolgirls in the Academy of Style. “You look like a lady,” he said, giving her the new bill he kept in his belt buckle. And, looking through the blinds, he watched her hail a taxi. It was eight o’clock. The people she was going to see dined late. Alone in the house, he felt secure, protected, owner of a night whose hours were bringing him closer to the end of his anguish. He got dressed slowly, smoothing out his suit as best as he could. Above the patio, the clouds, tinted purplish red by the city lights, thickened. Beyond, behind the pomegranate tree, was the dining room with the empty cupboard and its plaid oilcloth, while on the walls there were plates decorated with gondolas, castles, cats playing with balls of yarn, Neapolitan bays, and horseshoes resting on roses. He drank what liquor was left in the bottle, repeating to himself the text of the letter he had written, for want of better stationery, on one of those sheets of lined paper sold everywhere with two envelopes—in case the address gets smudged on the first. He wanted to do something to turn circumstances to his favor, praying that the addressee be in the house, that his emissary be received immediately, and that she return with news that would make him a free man. He took out the little book with the Cross of Calatrava on it, which he carried in his pocket as a good-luck charm. He went down on his knees before the statue of Saint Joseph decorated with rosaries, faintly illuminated by a single candle, reciting in a low voice the prayer to the Mediator between God and miserable sinners: “Most powerful patron and advocate, chosen, like Moses, by God not to guard a material ark but to watch over the true Ark of the Testament, Mary, in whose most pure womb the supreme lawgiver, Jesus Christ, took on human flesh . . .” When he finished, he wasn’t sure whether he had counted nine or ten prayers, so he made himself recite eleven more. But someone started knocking at the door—one of Estrella’s clients, no doubt—so he put out all the lights and crouched in the darkness, carefully listening to the noises in the street, where with each passing moment the commercial traffic converging on the market grew heavier and heavier. He slept a bit; or perhaps not; but the architect’s triangle that sought out his hand could only have come to him during a very short nap, with his body braced uncomfortably against the wall. The triangle did not exist. Several trucks passed. And after a king wait, when his confidence was becoming clouded’ with impatience, voices raised in a harsh argument in front of the house made him leap up with a start. Estrella was trying to calm down a man who was shouting at her in sarcastic tones, loud enough for the passersby, whom he called on to be witnesses, to hear him. The lock made a noise, and the woman came running in, waving the new bill he had given her to pay the taxi fare. “The taxi driver says it’s fake. And I haven’t got any . . .” Now the knocker was banging on the door, echoing strongly through the rooms in the back. “He says the bills with the General with the sleepy eyes on them are no good. I’m broke. I had to pay the rent today.” The man on the run took the bill and started to examine it, stupefied, stretching it against the light, turning it over, looking at it again and again, while the man outside kept up his shouting and joking. “I never make any trouble,” whined Estrella. “I just mind my own business.” A policeman slowly approached the door, where the man was still pounding the knocker. “Get out. I’ll take care of this,” said the woman, pointing toward the room where he’d prayed to Saint Joseph: a window led to a vacant lot. As he returned to the shadows, the door opened again and a confused dialogue began. The taxi driver, calm now, had accepted her apology and was excusing himself for having made such a fuss, telling how he’d gotten stuck with counterfeit money that had been passed at night when it was easier to fool people. Then there was whispering and laughter. And, suddenly, Estrella’s voice, exaggeratedly loud, so it could be heard on the other side of the patio. “I’m telling you, honey, there’s no one here. Go inside and look if you want.” Whipped by the warning, the man on the run slipped one leg over the windowsill and jumped into the darkness. He fell, slipping over a pile of wet papers mixed up with rotten fruit, feathers, oyster shells—refuse from the market, where tomorrow, after the dogs were finished, the vultures would be scratching around. His fatigue was suddenly so great that he remained there for a while, immobile among cold fruit skins and fish scales, unable to make up his mind to go. Tossed from above, a burning cigarette butt struck his hand. It was an unusual butt, made of country-style corn paper, the kind very few people use. The pain snapped him out of his inertia, and he stood up, uncertain which way to go. He felt for his sunglasses: he had left them behind on a woven wicker table next to Estrella’s bed. The headlights of a car that turned the corner stretched his shadow the length of the wall.