Thanks to Ramona and Luisa Pazo, Maydel Montesino, Alfredo Alonso, Bernardo Alonso, Gisela Gimeno, Ana Torrents, Beatriz de Moura, Ion de la Riva, Lorenzo Nadal, and Cristina Fernandez Cubas
Copyright © 1997, 2011 by Abilio Estevez
Translation copyright © 1998, 2011 by Arcade Publishing, Inc.
All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Arcade Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.
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Originally published in Spain in 1997 under the title Tuyo es el reino
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.
ISBN: 978-1-61145-596-0
Contents
I. One Night in the History of the World
II. My Name Is Scheherazade
III. The Faithful Dead
IV. Finis Gloriae Mundi
Epilogue: Life Everlasting
Translator’s Notes
For Elsa Nadal,
who has waited faithfully.
For Virgilio Pinera, in memoriam,
because the kingdom continues to be his.
Good Master, what good things shall I do,
that I may have eternal life?
—Matthew 19:16
I
One Night in the History of the World
So many stories have been told and are still told about the Island that if you decide to believe them all you’ll end up going crazy, so says the Barefoot Countess, who is crazy, and she says it with a mocking smile, which isn’t a bit surprising because she always wears a mocking smile, and as she says it she jingles her silver bracelets and perfumes the air with her sandalwood fan, on and on and on, sure that everyone is listening to her, and strolls through the gallery with her bare feet and her cane, on which she unnecessarily leans. She talks about the Island and with the Island. This is not an Island, she exclaims, but a tree-filled monstrosity. And then she laughs. And how she laughs. Listen, can’t you hear it? the Island has voices, and indeed everyone believes they hear the voices because the Barefoot Countess’s craziness is infectious. And the Island is a bounteous grove of pine trees, casuarinas, majaguas, yagrumas, palms, ceibas, and of mango and soursop trees that produce the biggest, the sweetest fruits. And there are also (surprisingly enough) poplars, willows, cypresses, olive trees, and even a splendid red sandalwood tree of Ceylon. And the Island grows a multitude of vines and rosebushes that Irene plants and tends. And it is crisscrossed by stone paths. And it has, in the center, a fountain of greenish water where Chavito has placed a clay statue of a pudgy little boy holding a goose in his arms. Forming a rectangle, houses arise, just barely managing to stem the advance of the trees. The trees nonetheless have strong roots and lift the paving stones of the galleries and the floors of the houses and cause the furniture to move, to wander as if they possessed souls. I tell you the day will come when the trees enter the houses, the Barefoot Countess insists in the tones of a prophetess. And though they feel afraid, Merengue, Irene, and Casta Diva laugh, they laugh at her, that crazy woman is full of surprises.
You get to the Island through the great door that lets out onto Linea Street, in a neighborhood of Marianao called (easy to see why) the Ovens. The entryway must have been sumptuous some years back. It has two severe columns supporting a pediment, and a solemn, well-rusted iron gate that is always closed. High in the gate, next to twisted iron letters that read THE ISLAND, sits a bell. If you want them to open for you, you have to shake the gate several times to make the bell ring, and then Helena will come out with the key and open the padlock. The times are very bad, Helena says to everyone who comes, by way of justification. The visitor has to recognize that, indeed, the times are very bad. And go into the courtyard. No matter that outside, there in the street, the heat might be unbearable. The courtyard has nothing to do with the street: it’s cool and humid, and it feels good to stay here a while and let your sweat dry. In one corner you can see Merengues cart, so white it’s a treat to look at, with windows that gleam. There are also different varieties of malanga growing in flowerpots, and a coarse reproduction of the Victory of Samothrace. You still can’t see the Island, though you can feel it; from the courtyard you can’t make out the Island because a huge wooden screen blocks your vision. Before you get to the gallery, the walls are a tarnished yellow, and the ceiling, supposedly white, is as yellow as the walls. The lamps are of unadorned iron, and hardly a one of them has its glass intact. In the first corner, right next to Uncle Rolo’s door, sit a dark metal spittoon and a wooden hat stand that has eroded away, unused. When you get to the end of the wooden screen and take a few steps forward along the left side of the gallery, you can declare that at last you have arrived in the Island.
And no one knows exactly when the Island was built, for the simple reason that it was not built at any one time, but at many times over the years, as a function of Godfather’s advancing or declining fortunes. The only thing that’s known for sure is that the main entrance was built when Menocal was in power and the “fat years” were in full swing. Everything else is speculation. Some think the first house was Consuelo ‘s, erected around 1880, and they may be on to something if you notice that Consuelo ‘s house is the most run-down. Rolo asserts, using facts he draws from who knows where, that a good part of the construction was already standing when the Treaty of Paris was signed. A fact that’s hardly worth remembering if you bear in mind that Rolo is capable, for the sake of appearing to know something, of asserting the most ridiculous nonsense. Whatever the case, it is evident that this enormous rectangle of stonework that encloses one part of the Island (the part they call This Side) was not erected all at once, but rather was built up through a series of changing tastes and needs. And perhaps that’s why it has the improvised air that so many attribute to it, the feel of a building that has never been finished. High and irregular time-blackened walls. Scant windows of frosted glass. Narrow double doors. Blue and mauve skylights. Why put a date on it? Professor Kingston explains, with irony, that the Island is like God, eternal and immutable.
And it is fortunate that the houses are in This Side, because The Beyond is practically impassable. A narrow little wooden door, built by Godfather many years ago and now almost in ruins, divides The Beyond from This Side. The Beyond is a wide strip of open terrain running down to the river where only one house stands, Professor Kingston’s, and one shed, where in another time Vido’s father kept his carpentry shop. The only path through that area that you can more or less see is the, one the old professor has worn with his daily walk.
It happens that, taken altogether, the Island (This Side and The Beyond) is many islands, many patios, so many that sometimes even the people who have lived there for years get lost and don’t know which way to turn. And Professor Kingston states that it depends on the hour, because for every hour and for every light there is an Island, a different Island; the Island at the siesta, for example, is nothing like the Island at dawn. Helena maintains that without statues it would be a different place. That’s true, the statues. Who could imagine the Isl
and without statues? The statues with which Chavito has filled the Island. They are beings, mute and motionless but as alive as everyone else, with as much consciousness and poverty as everyone else, as sad and as weak as everyone else. So says the crazy woman. And the others smile, shake their heads. Poor woman. Poor, crazy woman.
In one little corner that no one sees, between the Discus Thrower and the Diana, heading toward Consuelo ‘s old house, the Virgin of La Caridad del Cobre stands in a case built of glass and stones (brought back from a quarry in the province of Oriente). The stones and the glass blend in with the foliage. You have to know where the Virgin is to find her. She’s a tiny, humble image, no pomp, just like the original in the sanctuary of El Cobre. Everyone knows that this Virgin is the Patroness of Cuba; few know that there is no image more modest, more diminutive (barely ten inches tall), without any involuted splendors, as if it were purposely constructed to be hard to notice. The (eminent) artist who sculpted her mixed-race face is, of course, anonymous. Her (unadorned) dress was cut from coarse cloth of a nearly white shade of yellow. She has no crown; to be sincere, she needs none: her sloe-colored hair is crown enough. The child in her arms, mixed race as well, has a delightful expression on his little face. And where the anonymous artist proved his greatness was in the three young men at the Virgin’s feet, who row desperately in their boat, trapped by the storm over there toward the bay of Nipe. Everyone knows that La Caridad appeared to these three young men who were about to die. She chose them to be saved. She chose to reveal herself to them. Since they are so small, you have to look very carefully at them to discover that the anonymous (and eminent) artist has endowed them with life, that is to say, with anguish. Two of them (who have not yet had the Vision) are sure they are going to die. The third, however, the most chosen of the three, has already discovered the radiance and is looking up above. The anonymous artist has been able to depict him right at the moment when the shock has not yet gone from his face but blessedness has already begun to cover it. It should also be recorded here that the wooden wave that is trying to swallow the three men is a display of virtuosity. Before this humble (because of its size, I mean) image, Helena has placed an unadorned vase that she always fills with yellow flowers. There are, besides, a few votive offerings. Don’t lose sight of the glass case, of the Virgin, almost lost among her pagan companions (the Discus Thrower and the Diana). At some point she will be the protagonist of a singular deed that will mark the beginning of the catastrophe.
Did you know the sea was near? Yes, it is near and there are few people who know it. I couldn’t say why so few know that, since in this Island, no matter where you get lost, the sea has to be near. On an island the sea is the only thing that’s certain, because, on an island, the land is what’s ephemeral, imperfect, accidental, while the sea, to the contrary, is persistent, ubiquitous, magnificent, partaking of all the attributes of eternity. For an islander the perpetual discord of man against God does not play out between earth and heaven, but between earth and sea. Who said that the gods live in the heavens? No, let me ten you once and for all: both the gods and the devils live in the sea.
I couldn’t say why so few know that the sea is near, since after you walk past the narrow little wooden door that divides This Side from The Beyond, and you go beyond Professor Kingston’s room, Chavito’s studio, the old carpentry shop; after you cross the ditch that they ostentatiously call the River (what zeal for ennobling all that is small, poor, coarse!), you enter a grove of marabú bushes. They call this wilderness Mount Barreto. (Barreto was a kind of tropical Gilles de Rais.) In this grove, toward the right, a little path opens up. Perhaps, I know, it is euphemistic to call it a path. It is simply a narrow space where the marabú isn’t so aggressive, where with a little bit of imagination you can walk without undue difficulty. Walking through there for half an hour you get first to the ruins of the house they say belonged to Barreto (where they buried him, where they say he still lives, despite the fact that he died more than a hundred years ago). Then the marabú starts thinning out, the earth begins turning to sand, and the marabú trees give way little by little to pine trees, rubber plants, sea grapes. Suddenly, when you least expect it, everything comes to an end, that is, a strip of sand emerges. And the sea appears.
I have decided that today should be Thursday, late October. It has gotten dark long before dusk because today was the first day of autumn (which is not autumn) in the Island. Even though the sun rose on a beautiful summer day, little by little, so slowly no one could notice, the wind began to pick up and the heavens covered over with dark clouds that sped on the night. Chacho, who had gotten back from Headquarters just past four in the afternoon, was the first to notice the coming storm, and he told Casta Diva to take in the laundry that was hanging outside, and he went out to the gallery The woman saw him later, absolutely motionless, watching perhaps the tops of the trees. It’s true, Casta Diva thought, it looks like the world s coming to an end, and she shut the windows not just because the wind was Irene would come too, with her palm leaf fan and her smile. If it were a truly special night even Miss Berta would appear, since she is at times capable of taking a break in her prayers to forget that she is an exiled daughter of Eve, as she says with the perfect diction of a doctor of pedagogy It’s highly likely that Uncle Rolo would also be sighted, since there are nights when Rolo begins to draw near, as if against his will, as if he were a victim of chance, and he would bring with him (otherwise it wouldn’t be him) his melancholy, his defeated appearance, and a half-urgent, half-hopeful gaze, as if the people who got together in the Island were all superior creatures. And Merengue, who knows him well, would sit there watching him with sorrowful eyes and exclaim to himself, though making sure everyone could hear, poor man, poor man. Guffaws would break out. The conversation would begin. (None of this happens: we are now in a novel.)
Today the evening lights went out too soon. Lord, let me dream. Very early, Marta closed her eyes. Give me, at least, the possibility of having my visions, my own visions. Her eyes lived scarcely by the light of day. Since I can never know the real Brussels, the real Florence, let me walk through my Brussels, my Florence. And she went into the house without turning on any lights, why should poor Marta with her eyes closed need lights. I would love to see tall mountains bordering immense lakes with castles and swans. Marta goes to bed. Or doesn’t go to bed. There is a strong wind and it seems like people are pushing on the doors and windows. Since You have condemned me to the rocking chair, to this constant, dark, nearly black redness, give me too the possibility of seeing a ship, a street, a deserted plaza, a bell tower, an apple tree. Please God, I want to dream. Dream. Since I cannot see what everyone else sees, let me have access at least to what no one sees. It’s so simple.
The land of ice, and of fearful sounds where no living thing was to he seen, Professor Kingston recites, and he closes the windows with a stick. The windows are so tall this is the only way they can be closed. The world is coming to an end with this rainstorm, the world is coming to an end with this rainstorm and you won’t even have a little laudanum to relieve the pain of staying up late. You’ve lived for years in The Beyond and you realize it doesn’t matter whether you live on one side or the other. It doesn’t matter, old man, it doesn’t matter. Believe me. And you sit in the little rocker, Ciras little rocker, practically the only thing of Cira’s you’ve kept. The little rocker and a few letters she wrote you during the months you spent alone in New York. Professor Kingston breathes with difficulty He tries to cool himself with the cardboard fan they gave him this morning in the pharmacy On one side the fan shows a color photograph of a cat. Professor Kingston turns the fan around. He prefers the ad for Veloso’s Pharmacy on the back to the odious face of the cat. Now he runs his eyes around the room, looking for something to do. Today is Thursday, so he has no classes. Nothing waiting to be finished, either. The exams have been read, put in proper order, graded, placed on the table. The bed is clean and ready to receive him should sleep com
e. The kitchen, straightened up. With his eyes he reviews the room, which is spacious and cool since it has four windows that open onto The Beyond, and observes the grey walls, yellowish grey because it’s been so long since they were painted, though the room is exquisitely tidy and smells of Creolina, as it is obvious that Helena has no equal anywhere in Havana. He observes the furnishings, the iron bedstead, the modest wardrobe with discolored mirrors, Ciras little rocker of excellent wood (majagua, perhaps), which is like the Platonic idea of a rocker, the rocker itself, and he observes the table, horrid imitation Renaissance, and notices the toy chest he has filled with books, and the nightstand with the lamp and the volume of Coleridge. That’s fine. That’s good enough. Than OK. Everything’s fine so long as he doesn’t show up, doesn’t come near here. I fear thee, ancient Mariner. I don’t want to see him, wouldn’t want to see him for anything in the world, and in this I have to admit that I am no scholar. Professor Kingston tries out certain breathing exercises the doctor has taught him. He breathes in slowly, lifting his hands and counting to ten. Then he breathes out quickly through his mouth. Because many things are lost in the labyrinth of the mind, I can barely remember Cira’s face, the tone of her voice; I can’t remember the dress she was wearing. Sometimes I wonder if any of that was true. If I can say that she had an expression of joy when I found her, it’s because I have repeated it and repeated it over all these years, so the phrase has become stuck, expression of joy, without my being truly certain that it was so. Even the cat, Kublai Khan, I see it lying there indifferently at the foot of her bed just because I know that cats are indifferent. Just words, not true memories. I mean, it’s the rhetoric of memory that allows one, once the images disappear, to keep the illusion that one still remembers. Still and all, him I remember with absolute clarity. He remains intact in my memory, as if these twenty-three years had not passed. Yes, I should admit that I can’t see Cira, that I can’t see Kublai Khan, the way I can see him. The sharp uniform, the black, shining eyes, the skin evidently bronzed by the sun; the smile, the hands. And he halts his breathing exercises, sits motionless, listening. He has the impression that something has moved in the Island that is not the Island itself. Over these many years of living exiled in The Beyond, I have developed a sixth sense for listening and knowing the slightest intimacies of the Island. Footsteps? No, no, he thinks, he steels his nerve, not footsteps, must be fear, because the first thing fear does before taking shape is to draw near so that its steps can be heard, because fear is too much like that famous H. G.Wells character. Or perhaps it was just a palm frond, torn off by the wind that rose up today. Of course he knows that it is neither fear nor the knocking of a frond. And now he can be certain because he hears the footsteps again. There is a huge difference between this sound and that of the wind shaking the trees. These are footsteps, no doubt about it. The slow, heavy footsteps of someone who has difficulty walking. Professor Kingston stands up and steals to the door, presses his ear to it. Lowers his head and closes his eyes, as if by losing his sight he could concentrate better. The footsteps approach, stop, approach, stop. The old man thinks it must be someone limping with one leg. They come so close that he swears he can hear breathing. Then he feels that the door is moving as if they were pushing on it. For a few seconds there is just the language of the Island, wind, trees, swirling leaves. He thinks: better open. He thinks: better not open, turn off the lights, get into bed, cover up tight, because … What if it’s him? Well, if it’s him there’s nothing I can do. Nothing. Just open the door and let him in and allow him to say everything he has to say. The footsteps begin again, receding from the door. Receding as if they are going to the carpentry shop. Slow, heavy footsteps, steps of someone who limps and has difficulty walking. They recede and recede until they cannot be heard. Again it is the Island, like God Himself the eternal and immutable Island, He opens his eyes and realizes that at some point the fan has fallen from his hand. He goes to the wardrobe and puts on an old leather jacket from his New York days, and draws from a case the pistol that he won at the target shoot in a fair, a toy pistol that looks real. And of course it isn’t loaded, since it is a toy it can’t be loaded, it’s just to frighten, and then he turns on the outdoor light and opens the door and cautiously sticks out his head. The light is weak, it disappears into the first branches of the aralias and marabú bushes. Horrible weather. The red sky, so low, a wonder it hasn’t started raining yet. Windy, humid, smell of earth. Seems like there are thousands of people milling about but that’s just an impression the Island often gives. He steps out onto the scant cement sidewalk in front of the door. I’m trying to listen because my hearing is more reliable than my sight, and I cannot discover, in the hubbub of the trees, any sound that should alarm me. I stand motionless for a few seconds. That’s all, and he is about to turn back when he feels something make his shoe soles slip. On the sidewalk there is an intense red stain. He squats laboriously. Is it blood? He runs two fingers through the liquid, which is pleasantly warm, and brings them up close to his eyes. Blood, yes, blood. He stands laboriously. Holds up the pistol, squeezes the trigger, and listens to the metallic clack of the pistol mechanism. He turns back. Discovers that the door is also smeared with blood, and goes inside and closes the door well, with both locks, and his breathing becomes more and more difficult, and he walks to the center of the room, right beneath the light. If a man, he says, could walk in his dreams through hell and wet his fingers with blood as proof that his soul had been there, and if on awakening he found his fingers stained with blood … then what?
Thine is the Kingdom Page 1