After he got dressed, Lucio tried to go out without letting Irene notice. His outings always had something of a breakout about them (which doesn’t in the least mean that Irene didn’t detect them: for every son who tries to get away, there’s a mother to spy on him). So that Irene had hardly heard the footsteps in the living room, footsteps only she could have been capable of hearing, when she called, shouted anxiously perhaps (because once again she was lost, despite the fact that she was sitting right there, on the easy chair in her room), shouted in anguish the name of her son, Lucio, Lucio, and he felt for one infinitesimal instant the unpleasant sensation of having been found at fault, though the most elementary reasoning would show that there is no fault in getting dressed and going out into the Island or into the streets. Docile, though masking his docility with an air of annoyance, he entered his mother’s room. Irene was in the shadows, seated on her easy chair, caressing a stuffed falcon; she raised her head and exclaimed, What a handsome son! in authentic admiration and authentic sadness, and asked, Whose bird is this, Lucio? do you know whose bird is this? and she broke down crying. Lucio knew instinctively to caress her, to kiss her, to tell her, Don’t cry, please, don’t cry, Mamá, after all it doesn’t matter whose the bird is, because you’re here and that’s the only thing that’s important. He did nothing, said nothing. He merely wet his lips with the tip of his tongue and made another mocking gesture with his mouth that he knew was false and that he couldn’t help doing. In a halting voice, crying all the while, Irene tried to explain to him, Ay, son, I found this falcon and I swear it was important, the problem is I don’t know why or to whom. Pretending annoyance, Lucio left his mother’s room and entered the other one, where the Wounded Boy lay. There, between white sheets, calm and alive, the Wounded Boy seemed a hallucination. Lucio had already admired his curly saffron hair, his eyes that sometimes opened to flash with a mysterious blackness, just like his bronze skin, like his well-defined, hairless chest, like his long arms, like his magnificent hands (especially the hands, right, Lucio? especially the hands). The room was still dark; that is, Irene hadn’t turned on the lights; nevertheless, a blue light, very blue, escaped from the body of the Wounded Boy. Lucio approached unctuously. Boy, he asked, who are you? what are you doing here? The Wounded Boy moved a hand imperceptibly and opened his eyes, which weren’t black but green. Lucio thought the Wounded Boy was watching him from the distance of his fever. Who are you? what are you doing here? he repeated, caressing the boy’s forehead (which was burning). And he had the impression that when he touched his body, the blue light burst from his own hand, and he felt a kind of current passing to his body. Rare well-being, swift happiness, unfathomable, uncontainable desire to burst out laughing, crying (two verbs that in this case covered the same joy, the same passion for life). He went out, smelled the damp aroma of the Island, the breeze carrying all the smells of night, turned onto the stone path that opens up between the bust of Greta Garbo and the Hermes of Praxiteles, saw the trees that night makes even larger, walked along touching the trees, and it was as if the trees were growing, were growing at the touch of his hands, as if his footsteps made the earth spring forth with thoughts and mimosas, jasmine, hibiscus. When he reached the fountain with the Boy and the Goose, he considered that everything he saw, and more than that, everything he couldn’t see and could only imagine, everything, the world, the whole world, was the result of his creation.
“It’s hot” is the phrase heard most often in this Island since the days of the Creation, It’s hot, at any time in any place, the circumstances don’t matter, when you open your eyes to the sluggish morning sun, or when you go outside to see what the sky is offering you today, or you await without resignation the downpour whose greatest threat isn’t the black clouds but the horrendous steam that rises from the earth, and it compels you to shout, It’s hot, oh yes it is hot, at Sunday dinner, at some saint’s day party, when it’s time to take out the tamales, to fry the chicharrones, to uncork the bottles of rum, to play dominoes under the royal poinciana, It’s hot, it’s real real hot, when some baby lets out its first cry, and also in the bed of liaisons, in the bed of sunken bodies (bodies sunken in heat), in the instant when they try to flee, not by sea, not by road, not by distance, but by a path of mixing salivas, mixing sweats, mixing saps, by the path of enjoyment, between one caress and the next, one kiss and the next, one bite and the next, when they spread their legs to receive another’s vitality, It’s hot, writing the letter, watering the roses and writing the miscellany that is the greeting of the peerless Graces of the peerless Island, It’s hot at the wake, facing the burning candles, and also at the hour of the Holy Sacrament, and at the moment of jumping out the window, hoisting the flag, singing the anthem, or when you’re dying in a nursing home bed, or swimming in the steaming sea, or you stop on the steaming street corner not knowing which road to take (it’s a lie, the roads don’t lead to Rome!), each road opens a path to the frying pans of hell, It’s hot for the carpenter, the lawyer, the dancer, the tourist, the woman-of-the-house, the woman-of-the-street, the candy-seller, the bartender, the pigtailed girl, the girl-without-pigtails, the bus driver, the nurse, the high-ranking officer, the actress, the criminal, the singer, the teacher, the model, the collector, the writer, the little-shot and the big-shot, the winner and the loser, if there’s anything democratic about this Island it’s that, for everyone, It’s hot.
Sebastian will try to write in the sand, on the seashore. Sebastian will try to write, with his index finger, that phrase he heard from the tall, suited mulatto who went one day to buy books at Eleusis. Sebastian will write, I don’t understand anything, I’m a simple soul, while one wave after another and another will come and erase the phrase each time. For all Sebastian persists in rewriting it, each time the sea will erase it.
So the truth is, Lucio, I don’t understand what you went to do at Miriam’s house, or rather, around Miriam’s house. If you were feeling good, if you were lucky enough to enjoy an instant of that contentment not everyone can attain (I want you to know: there are people who die without ever knowing the luck of imagining themselves for one second the creator of all that exists), what evil notion led you toward a meeting with the woman you hate? (Yes, you hate her, we should call things by their real names, don’t you think?) I know, you never got there, you prowled around her house like a thieving ghost debating whether you should enter and say, Good evening (with your mellifluous voice, the best of your smiles, the politest way possible), give her father a formal handshake, give a kiss to her mother (or to the air of cheap fragrance that surrounds her mother) who will doubtless be leafing through a copy of Vanidades, and then kiss her, Miriam, the woman you hate, and sit down in the rocking chair to repeat, You have the prettiest eyes I’ve ever seen, while you know you’re lying, and you consider yourself a swine for lying, while you’re thinking about the festive atmosphere of the outdoor cafes on Prado. If you detest the house, the woman, the family, why did you have to go, why lose another night of your life? (I don’t know if you’re aware how few nights there are in your life) and, worst of all, why make her lose hers, too? why? You didn’t enter, you didn’t see her, it’s true; perhaps it was worse to stick around on that corner, smoking in the shadows, taking advantage of the burned-out lightbulb in the street lamp, watching the lights of the house, knowing that the lights of the house were waiting for you, lying in wait, allowing a delinquent’s eyes to look out through your eyes, allowing mediocre malefactor’s fear to supersede your fear. Why not tell her once and for all you don’t like her? Miriam is just seventeen. At that age, a disappointment in love lasts three days.
No, I don’t hate Miriam, it’s true I don’t love her, it’s true I don’t like to rock by her side in the rocking chair, and that rocking chair seems like the most uncomfortable one in the world to me, and her hand the roughest, and her voice the most unpleasant, and her eyes so unexpressive (you could say she was denied the ability to look), and her teeth are dry and they don’t laugh
when they laugh, no, I don’t like to kiss her, I detest the flowers she sticks in her hair, and the dress she wears every Wednesday for me, and the magnolia scent of her perfume, her perfume makes me want to run away, and her hands always holding the little fan and the little lace handkerchief, I abhor little fans and little lace handkerchiefs, and the women who hold little fans and little lace handkerchiefs, it’s true, I wouldn’t like to be next to her even in my most desperate moment, and when I’m on her big porch, sitting next to her in the torturous rocking chair, I have the impression that if I don’t jump up and run away the world might come to an end, yes, that’s true, but I don’t hate her.
Night in Havana begins early, and that’s why night is so long in Havana. Even before it grows dark, Havana is partying. Well, it is always partying, because Havana is a twenty-four-hour party, from the moment the sun rises until it sets, it’s well known, here you greet dawn with the same cheerful striking of drums, the same offerings of fruits and booze as you bid farewell to night, and I know it’d be better to write: One of the mysteries that night brings to most cities (there are cities with no mystery) begins sooner in Havana than anywhere else. Lighted signs are turned on impatiently. Long before the sky darkens, before the bars make their presence even more obvious, before the lights go on in the outdoor cafes on Prado where the bands play, there’s an hour in Havana that is neither day nor night. Children are still playing hide-and-seek in Fraternidad Park, still running around the bronze busts (luckily stained by the cheerful crapping of birds), still bathing in the stagnant green and venerable waters of the Fountain of the Indian, still singing, Let’s go, let’s go, the fountain broke! still jumping rope, One, two, buckle my shoe, when the scandalous, convertible, red-painted Fords and Buicks begin to arrive, and men emerge from them wearing cotton twill, with slicked-back hair, gold-plated watch chains, and two-toned shoes; and sculpted women approach with their hair always done up to the point of despair, always with steatopygia (real or feigned), walking lightly on heels so light and so high they don’t exist. The churches haven’t closed yet and the gaming halls have already opened, and the parishioners hurry out of the churches and run to trade their rosaries and breviaries for rum glasses and decks of cards or dice cups. Shopkeepers haven’t closed their stores yet and you can already see the bottles being uncorked. Before the bells for the Ángelus ring you can hear the bands and their catchy melodies, At Prado and Neptuno there’s a chick that all the guys can’t help but watch. Night still hasn’t fallen and the city has already begun the best homage ever made to a race cruelly annihilated by the Conquest: serving great transparent glasses of cold Hatuey beer (cold as can be, for cooling down your throat, for exorcising the devil we call heat). Night falls on a city where for some time now it has been night.
Night began early in Havana, and we should imagine Lucio, dressed like a typical Cuban, like a prince, heading through Fraternidad Park toward the outdoor cafes on Prado. The children of course were there at the Fountain of the Indian, except they weren’t singing Let’s go, let’s go any longer, just sitting there, silent and still, unsmiling, looking somber. The first thing that surprised Lucio whenever he was about to cross Prado Boulevard was the fortunate odor that received him, the mix of odors, of fries, sweat, onions, flowers, dried cod, urine, oil, garlic, bread, beer, perfumes. The outdoor cafes were well lit and full of people, and Lucio sensed that he could forget Miriam. In the first bandstand he recognized the Anacaona Orchestra with its majestic mulattos playing a danzonete. Although a few couples took up the dance, the majority preferred to keep on drinking, laughing, talking at the top of their lungs, perhaps holding back now so they could let go all the more freely at a later hour. He stopped when he got to the corner of Dragones Street and leaned against a column. Very close to me, a blonde stirred under the arms of a man who looked like one of the bronze statues at the ends of the entrance to the Capitol; he was kissing her on the mouth as if he wanted to empty her out; to let herself be kissed, she was standing on the tips of her toes, her dress was creeping up, I swear you could see her black lace underwear, and also, since there were so many people standing around the kissing couple, a little red-haired kid was trying to pick the wallet out of the back pocket of the man who looked like a bronze statue (who was so busy trying to eviscerate the woman he didn’t even notice), I saw the red-haired boy, he noticed I was looking at him on purpose, that I had seen him, and he ran off in search of another pocket, I suppose, now the band was playing, There’s a tree that grows in my Cuba, you can’t cut it down unless you pray … a whore with a thousand-year-old face covered by a thousand layers of makeup offered me a cigarette and I said, No, I don’t smoke, my dear, I have other vices but not that one, and I pretended to look away, in another direction, though I was actually having fun watching how she studied me from top to bottom, biting her lips, as if she were looking at a piece of candy, Woman, you’re the one who should be paying me. Since the whore kept on circling, Lucio left the column he had been leaning against (only one of a million or so columns in the city) and continued toward Teniente Rey Street, where a female band played, Even Queen Elizabeth dances danzón, ‘cause its rhythm’s so sweet and delicious. A ragged Chinese woman walked by, touching all the drinkers and passing judgment, This guy has a big one, this guy has a small one, this guy doesn’t have one at all, protected by a chorus of guffaws. A gaunt forty-year-old in black suit and hat was announcing, An angel descended from heaven, he had great authority and the earth was lit up in his radiance, this angel told me: “It shall fall, worry not, Babylon the Great shall fall, it has become the abode of demons, the dwelling place of impure spirits of every sort, and it shall fall, you may be sure of it, Babylon the Great shall fall and not even the memory of it shall remain.” Now the band was playing The Martians have just arrived, and they came here to dance the cha-cha-cha. A group of people had gathered almost in the doorway of the Diario de la Marina. Lucio stopped out of curiosity and saw an adolescent boy, grown disproportionately tall, white as could be, timid-looking, dressed only in a loincloth. Facing him, a man in a suit (evidently the boy’s father: you might say, an aged replica of him) opened a suitcase full of knives of every shape and size. Now you will see a unique sight, shouted the man in a voice that tried to mask his exhaustion, now you will see something never seen before, here you have before you Sebastian of the Knives, the martyr nonpareil, he who knows-not-the-meaning-of-pain. At a distance of four or five yards from the man, with rare equilibrium, the adolescent balanced on a beam, eyes closed, arms and legs wide open, expression of waiting resignation. A little girl Lucio hadn’t noticed before (she blended into the public) began beating a drum. The man took the largest of the knives. Please, gentlemen, be silent, very silent, I require the greatest cooperation from our kind and beloved public. He pointed the knife at the adolescent and stood still a few seconds, watching him with a fixity that became almost unbearable. Then he threw the knife into one of the boy s arms. The boy barely opened his lips to utter a slight groan that could not be heard. Blood rushed out quickly, as did the public's Ahh! The boy returned to his motionlessness, to the meekness of his waiting. Another knife penetrated his other arm with the consequent loss of blood, except that this time the boy limited himself to pressing his lips tight. Lucio thought the adolescent was growing paler. A third and a fourth knife struck each thigh. Blood, of course, burst from them with even greater force. The fifth ended in his breast, beside his heart, and this time the boy could not repress a grimace that opened his eyes (meek, it is true, but also alarmed). The sixth went into his gut. The seventh perforated his forehead, and the impact was such that it almost managed to knock him off balance. His face flowed with blood and with a strange blood-streaked substance. The adolescents whole body was soaked with blood. The violence with which the father threw the knives, his face filled with hate, shocked Lucio almost more than the spectacle of the wounded boy. The public cheered, applauded ardently. One woman fainted and another began to jump with happiness.
Next to Lucio a man exclaimed enthusiastically, This is the most educational spectacle I have seen in a long, long time, and he threw a bill toward the man s open box. Lucio felt sick. He kept walking down to the Theater Payret, where a Spanish zarzuela troop was performing La Gran Via. Later, for the midnight show, they would screen a Dolores del Rio movie. Another band, also all women, could be heard playing A rose of France, whose soft fragrance, one evening in May … (to a son tempo). The grandiose entrance to the Payret was crowded with people. Every possible form of human being was there. Coming and going, Babelian uproar, indistinct, unbearable. Only the sales pitch of the flower and cigarette vendors could rise above that confusion. A pretty girl came up to me, wearing a dark green velvet dress (velvet on the Island, what do’ you think?) under which she must have been sweating like a pig, looked at me with too-feminine blue eyes, smiled with a too-feminine mouth, stretched out to me her little alabaster hand (where does she hide this beauty during the day?) encrusted with jewels, too feminine (which I kissed to make myself out to be a libertine), and exclaimed with too feminine a tone in her rough voice, May God bless you, macho! too much femininity, too female of her, don’t you think? it was a man, of course, there’s no woman so feminine as a man when he wants to be feminine, and women know it, and that’s why they hate feminine men. Lucio looked for a flower vendor, bought a Black Prince, and gave it to her. Please, she asked sweetly but firmly, leave me alone, because you can’t fool me. The girl sniffed the flower, smiled, and threw a kiss as she walked away in her green velvet dress. Across the street, by the doors to the Centro Gallego, Lucio found they had opened a side show, SHOW OF WONDERS, said the sign by the entrance. Roosters with six feet, hermaphrodite monkeys, cows with a single horn in the center of the head, human fetuses with two heads, gigantic chameleons, eyeless dogs, and the only living beings in the show: Siamese twin sisters, resolutely united, who played guitars and sang Punto Guajiro. Lucio walked on past the National Theater, where Lucia di Lammermoor was playing, thought of Casta Diva (naturally enough) and, not knowing what else to do, turned the corner into San Rafael Street. He felt tired and entered the Nautilus Bar. Luckily the bar was almost empty. On the Victrola he heard the voice of Vicentico Valdés, Envy, how I envy the handkerchief that once dried your tears … Seated at a table, he asked for a double rum and lit a cigarette.
Thine is the Kingdom Page 18