Mamá, I don’t get it, whines Tingo-1-Don’t-Get-It, searching for refuge by Casta Diva. Looking at him in ill humor, his mother orders him to shut up. Tingo interrupts the psalm Miss Berta is singing. Why, Mamá, why? Shut up, boy, shut up. No, explain it to me, why? I don’t get it, I want to know. If only we knew, Rolo says with double meaning, there’s nothing to be known. Today is November 2, the day of the faithful dead. And that, what difference does that make? They fall silent, forget their prayers, look this way and that in perplexity. And
What is death?
Do you know the story of the young man who was going to marry a beautiful maiden and found a corpse on the path? If you don’t know it, you’ll never understand why it is that on days like today every theater in Spain puts on a performance of Donjuán Tenorio by the vilified, the none-too-easy Zorrilla.
On a certain occasion it happened that a young man, on the eve of his wedding, walking down a path, found a skeleton. As a joke he asked the skeleton, Why don’t you come to the wedding banquet? And he continued on his way. The skeleton, however, did attend the banquet, to the surprise and horror (I suppose) of all present, and ate and drank with the best of them, and when it had finished came up to the youth and told him, I want to give you a present, I beg you to come with me. Trembling, the youth followed the skeleton a long ways, for a long time, and they climbed mountains and passed rivers and settlements until they arrived (at night, of course) at a wide valley full of little lights. The youth discovered that the lights came from thousands of millions of candles all lit in the valley. Some had just been lit, some were half done, some were about to be extinguished, some were already out. What do all these candles mean? the youth inquired. Each one represents the life of each one of the men living on earth. The youth looked around and almost in a whisper asked, Which is mine? This one! exclaimed the skeleton, raising one up, it blew on the candle and out it went.
What is death?
Look at me, take a good look at me and don’t forget me, take a good long look at me until you’re tired of looking at me, and then you’ll stop asking the question, what is death? death is a night when you have no one to see and no one to tell that you have no one to see so you could tell them you have no one to see, look at me, take a good look at me, life is a journey, death is another journey, the goal is the horizon, the horizon is a line you can never reach, no matter how much you push yourself you can never reach it, because if you reach it, it stops being a horizon, couldn’t it be that one journey (the journey of life) and the other journey (the journey of death) are the same journey and we just don’t know it? couldn’t it be that the words life and death designate the same thing? come on, answer, have you ever waited for someone for a long time, so long you forgot you were waiting for someone? waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting, to the end, and the funniest part is there isn’t any end, sitting in the living room as if a catastrophe had occurred, as if it had, and I emphasize that because, forget about catastrophes, the earth is calm and quiet, it turns and turns, as the tango says, and no one but you waits and waits, nobody knocks at the door, ay, God, it’s horrifying, you complain, yes God exists, but He’s deaf, and who dares to emphasize the difference between a live man and a dead man, don’t come to me with that nonsense about how a living man breathes and a dead man doesn’t, and the carrion?: an insignificant accident.
What is death?
Young man, my boy, if I could sit down one day and tell you the story of my life from the first cry I took up to today, you wouldn’t be bold enough to ask me a question like that, you wouldn’t allow yourself to be so ingenuous, at the beginning one thinks one knows what death is, you’re even able to define it in so many words, sensible words, apt words for the inept, I’ve seen death so often and so close up, I’ve dreamed it, repudiated it and yearned for it so many times, it’s circled me and I’ve circled it so persistently that by now I know any attempt to define it is foolish, the closer it is the farther off, the horizon, I said and I’ll say it again, so now you all think this is a special night, the night of the faithful dead? poor people, could this be the night when our dead feel, more intensely, the happiness of being dead? I’m telling you that today is our day, that they’re the ones holding wake for us, yes, I know, those are words, one gets into the habit of words, let’s pull out our tongues, cut off our hands, rip out our rotting hearts, it’ll be a better world, me, for example, I love to sleep, sleep is a foretaste of death, a preparation, a lesson, my conclusion, everyone dreams what they really are though no one understands it, do you dream? do you have nightmares? let me say once and for all that I hate foolish questions and foolish answers even more, anyone knows that living and dying is the same thing and both mean dreaming.
What is death?
One day I went to the cemetery, they were removing the remains of someone I had loved dearly, someone who must be in heaven (if such a thing is possible), and the gravediggers had made a mistake and accidentally (or on purpose, gravediggers love errors) opened a tomb which wasn’t the tomb of that someone I had loved dearly, they removed the splendid and recent cadaver of an eleven-year-old girl, I saw her, yessir, I saw her with these same eyes that will someday fall from their sockets, the girl had turned into a trembling mass of pus and worms that didn’t keep still for one second, in some places there were bits of skin, what must have been a lovely eleven-year-old skin, and the gravediggers told me she had been a pretty corpse, the prettiest corpse, but when I saw her you could never have told that, and I won’t even mention the stench, no, there’s no stench in the world more unbearable than that of a human body when it dies, I swear, I remember especially the eyes, they had already lost the lids and were two puddles of green liquid that flowed incessantly like tears, and running all over that body (I say body so you’ll understand me) were giant white cockroaches, like none I’d ever seen or have ever seen again, I suppose until I putrefy myself, and there was strange laughter from the mouth, there’s no laughter so persistent, thousands of flies arrived from every inch of the cemetery to hum on the gelatinous mass that had been a girl of eleven years, and at her feet, intact, untouched, clean, perfect, a lovely blond blue-eyed doll that when we moved it said Mamá.
What is death?
Shut up, serpent, close your filthy mouth.
Fine, I’ll close my mouth, mais vous serez semblable a cette ordure, a cette horrible infection, étoile de mes yeux, soleil de ma nature.
Shut up or I’ll turn you into carrion long before you’re ready.
Please, ladies and gentlemen, respect the memory of the dead.
Man is the only animal that warehouses its dead, the only animal, the only.
Give us refuge in Your bosom, merciful God.
Yes, give us refuge in Your bosom of horror and putrefaction.
Listen, I’d like to take a step, open a door, take another step, and that’s it.
That is, nothing, one step and dust.
Dust, nothing.
Don’t tell me, so you believe that we like to be kept in boxes, enclosed in vaults, and abandoned to putrefy?
Ay, fuck it, it drives me to despair to think they’ll close me up and cover up this flesh, full of desires, cover up this, all that I am, with a marble slab.
Don’t bring me flowers, did you hear? don’t bring me flowers.
What is death?
Do you remember, my friend, that man we saw drowned one day when we wanted to have fun, drink some beers by the mouth of the river, down by the sea? remember? a magnificent young man, that is, a young man, other magnificent young men pulled him out, he wasn’t stiff yet, and his body resisted understanding that the blood no longer flowed through it, his body refused to forget the sky and the seagulls and the ice-cold beers we were drinking, you told me, In one instant man ceases being man and turns into a thing, and, do you really think that that lovely dead man was a thing, one more thing among other things? we didn’t want to look at it, we did want to look at it, we didn’t look, we did look, and
you have to admit: the drowned man had added to his physical beauty, the beauty of indifference.
What is death?
The Island.
Have you all noticed the Island? immense tombless cemetery, gigantic cemetery of the Island, wandering souls rove about the Island, and when did these poor islanders die?
Among the Balonda, they say, the man abandons the hut and garden where his favorite wife died, and if he returns to that place, it is to pray for her.
To die is to enter the second life, the better one.
I don’t want any more life than this one, let them leave me in this one forever, cheap rum, corn candy, and if possible a Nico Membiela or Blanca Rosa Gil record, and another with Esther Borja singing Enchanting maiden, maiden, I’ll die for you.
Yes, let them leave me here drinking Hatuey beer, eating El Miño sausages, roast suckling pig, boiled squash and malanga with islander sauce, understand me, there are some things that aren’t meant for tonight.
Man is a suit of clothes, an old rag somebody hung on a nail and forgot, time passes and when you look again, nothing, a bit of dust on the floor you have to sweep up.
Have you ever gotten lost in the Island?, ah, getting lost in the Island, at this precise Island time when no one can say exactly what time it is, waking up not knowing who you are, or where you are, or what you’re going to do, remove the layers of earth they’ve thrown over you, get up for nothing, look around you when there’s nothing to look at, no, dying is a fiesta, a dance with the Florida Maravillas, with the Belisario López Orchestra, a son, a mambo, a cha-cha-cha, a bolero, for the sake of our love and for your own good I’ll say good-bye good-bye, good-bye, good-bye, how sad was your good-bye, what tremendous loneliness I feel without your love.
Ladies and gentlemen, please, a little respect.
What is death?
Maeterlinck, Maurice Maeterlinck, know who he is? said that utter annihilation was impossible, that we are prisoners of an infinity with no way out, where nothing perishes, everything disperses, but nothing is lost either, he said that neither a body nor a thought could fall out of time and space, from which you can deduce, my friends, that I won’t die! ever! I’ll never die, when the hour comes for death rattles and last gasps and dying breaths, when hands that think they’re being pious come to close these obstinate eyes, by then I’ll already be transformed into the fruit that some adolescent is eating, into the water that cools your bodies, into the bread that satisfies hunger, into the wine that wipes out sorrow, into the shade tree that allays the beastly sun of the Island, into the beastly sun of the Island, into every laugh with which we like to scare away the horror of the Island, into every word, I’ll be in every word, I’m a combination of words, I’m all the words, my words, ascending to the stars and from there we should direct the destiny of mortals.
Are you finished? too much rhetoric for my taste.
What is death?
Vido calls over Tingo-1-Don’t-Get-It and asks him, Listen, do you want to see a dead woman? Although he is shocked, Tingo nods yes. Come, I know a dead woman and I’m going to show her to you, and I’ll also show you how to revive her. Vido goes running out through the gallery and ducks in behind the Venus de Milo. Tingo follows him. The night of the faithful dead is clear and the trees are sharply visible. The voices, the songs, the psalms remain behind them. By the Laocoön, surrounded by the fig trees and the charcoal ebonies, Vido stops. It’s here, he says, kneel down. Why? Because, idiot, because you have to kneel, otherwise she won’t show up. Not getting it, Tingo kneels down. Now close your eyes, concentrate, say to yourself, May the dead woman appear. Vido loosens his belt and lowers his pants. Open your eyes! and there is an imperious, impatient tone in his voice. Tingo opens his eyes. Vido is fondling himself. She’s dead, see? Tingo is about to stand up but Vido stops him: Touch her, go ahead, touch her and make her revive, if you get her to revive you’ll have to kill her slowly again.
The night keeps getting later and later, really night, really clear. They are constantly having to relight candles that have blown out. When they’re lit, by the light of the tiny trembling flames, the photographs look like images of saints.
And after all, can anyone finally tell me, what is death?
Very late, when night is really night, when no one can or no one feels able to tell what time it is, the narrator decides a miracle should occur. It’s not actually a miracle. The narrator (who has the defect of grandiloquence) wants to dress it up in an atmosphere of greatness, of wonder. The narrator has his theatrical streak, which, much as he wants to, he cannot part with. Impatient, like any self-respecting reader, the impatient reader wants to know what this miracle is.
Thine is the Kingdom Page 22