La Vida Doble (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

by Fontaine, Arturo

  “I’d like to pet them,” Pancha told me with a deliberately sensual smile. “But I can’t, not before they’re examined for fingerprints. There are some guns that are beautiful, don’t you think? And is it possible to separate their beauty from their function?”

  I saw them shove outside the poor old deaf woman who gave the house its cover, as she protested, handcuffed and blindfolded. I watched from behind my ski mask, in that dirty war up to my neck.

  I would have liked to be Scheherazade. I should have been. But once my alibi fell I didn’t know how to keep inventing stories.

  And that’s how I started collaborating, and collaborating meant informing on my brothers, handing over—contritely—their names to my confessor, Flaco or Gato. Mostly Gato. There’s a vertigo that comes with informing. You turn completely. And you confess and cry and talk and cry names, dates, faded places. And in doing so, the fear of pain disappears, and for a moment, you’re reconciled with that terrible god who demanded that sacrifice. Because that disastrous god, you discover later, asked you to give him an argument for your life and your future. It was a Faustian bargain. And still you have no inkling of what that phrase really means: “to sell your soul to the Devil.” A deus absconditus took for himself all you could ever be, he’s a jealous Mephistopheles whose desire is violent and all-encompassing. There’s something cannily attractive in that death. I have to be born again for Flaco, for Gato; I’m a new woman, I’m “la Cubanita,” Consuelo Frías Zaldívar, native of Matanzas, who is interrogating Chico Escobar and Briceño.

  My loss of respect for myself will make my job ever easier. In my betrayed brothers’ faces—though of course they don’t recognize me, they will never see me—you can read the hate mixed with fear. They’re stupefied. Little by little it will spread through Red Ax. A death sentence has been communicated and hangs over an informer—they don’t know who it is, but I do—and there’s no turning back, the cards have been dealt.

  And when, a month and a half later, they let me go again—earlier, I’d had to call my mother from “Paris” to justify the unforeseen extension of my trip—an urgent and concrete problem occurred to me, one that “inexplicably” no one seemed to have thought of before: What happened to la Cubanita? How to explain her disappearance, which coincided with my freedom? My situation was extremely dangerous. There was a death sentence hanging over this “Cubanita,” I’m telling you. A spy who is caught in our organization will be punished unto death. The same is true for one who deserts or informs to the police. The solution fell by its own weight: I had to go back to headquarters and interrogate. People had to know that la Cubanita was still in action. As for me, I had already given up. I didn’t need incentives. So the circumstances—did I really say “circumstances”?—obliged me to return, hooded and using a fake Caribbean voice. I now had this job in addition to my private French classes. I started earning exactly 35 percent more each month. I was no longer receiving, as you know, the stipend from Red Ax. I had to educate and support my daughter. I didn’t want her to suffer because of me, I didn’t want her to lack anything because of me. The prose of life is like that, prosaic and hackneyed.

  And I didn’t give myself halfway, let me tell you. Once I’d taken the step, I did it all the way. I took courses in intelligence. I was a diligent student. I learned quickly. I came prepared. And at the swearing-in ceremony I intoned the hymn of Central Intelligence: “We are children of silence. . .” No sooner had I received my new general ID card, my Central ID card, and my CZ, I swore I would use it. I hated my brothers.

  I thought about the thousands and thousands and thousands of innocent lives martyred as they searched for us, the clandestine fighters. We behaved, I told myself, as if we had already done what we hoped to eventually do; we believed that the magnitude of our hope was enough to make us right. Now it irritated me that I had listened, enthralled, to Pelao Cuyano, who had done a course in military instruction at Punto Cero and I hadn’t, and who told us in an accent that reminded us of Che: “Mirá, look, Giap had never fought before when he took over as the leader of the Armed Propaganda Brigade, and with only thirty-three men, think about it, Che, with only thirty-three men, Giap started the revolutionary war in Vietnam. Ten years later, in Dien Bien Phu, four divisions entered into combat, some eighty thousand men. What do you have to say about a thing like that, girl?” And he looked at us with fevered eyes.

  Our political analyses were hermeneutic exercises. They were about recognizing in our profane present the repetition of archetypal events from our sacred history. That’s how the crusader lives. The truth is, our story was much more modest than Giap’s: a minis-cule number of trained combatants had unleashed the military’s paranoia and its politics of extermination. Everything was out of proportion: our rhetoric of armed struggle and the implacable cruelty of the military response. I came to think all this much later, certainly, when betrayal and treachery had become a habitual form of revenge against my brothers and against myself. Against my brothers because they refused to acknowledge that we were going to be grabbed by the eyelashes, for making me believe in a utopia whose only possible future was failure, and against myself for being duped by a religion that, like all religions, was no more than a cult of death.

  A collaborator, to be used by that Moloch to facilitate his plans. And also to quell the remorse and self-hate that come when you feel yourself to be a traitor. A person needs to believe herself to be good, and to justify her actions. They are the guilty ones, not I, and I must denounce them. What sense does it make, what they’re doing? It’s a thanatotic sickness, I tell myself. The truth is they don’t even believe anymore that their sacrificial death will bring about a new world. They go through life clinging to a dream that’s long gone. The “revolution,” as they remember it, is over. They’re tied to something dead. They identify with something that has vanished. They can’t bury their dead and resign themselves to the idea that their dreams are buried, because it’s as if they were burying themselves.

  So they take some ammunition by force from the Aquageles plant, they lay their cables, set their watches, and oil their Brownings, their Kalashnikovs. They’re being summoned by the defunct. They are few. They are ancestral voices demanding blood, revenge, and sacrifice. Though there is no hope, and perhaps because there is no hope. That’s the great thing, I tell myself, the noble thing, I tell myself and contradict myself. The idea is to sacrifice yourself. A symbol, a moral testament.

  And so their fight against inequality, their scientifically blind trust in victory and life, gets confused with the death that patiently waits for them and ties them up and leaves them with no tomorrow. Otherwise, there would be only the futility of a life given over drop by drop to a cause that wasn’t worth the trouble. Then, to live is to die along with your dead. My death is fidelity; it is a solution. To give everything in order to detonate some bomb, to do damage of any kind and not acknowledge that in the meantime they’ve switched the movie. To change is to betray myself, sell out, and dilute myself. That’s how I came to think when I was one with my brothers: I am what I was, and what I was, I will be always. What we were, or nothing! What we were, or death! Yes. And hope, where was that?

  And now that same woman had the job of asking questions in a Cuban voice. The weapon of my spite. I wasn’t bad at it. Gato was beside me. The stench of garlic and accumulated sweat. I’m sure he wore his shirts more than once. He had a slightly crooked nose. Every so often he would pull his lapel tighter with a small, clenched hand, showing his pointed knuckles and the protruding veins that ran from them to his too-thin wrist. That was when he wasn’t interrogating, because he used gloves for that. A flap of fat and skin hung down over the neck of his shirt.

  In the meantime, I diligently went on giving my private French classes, I continued going with Clementina to art openings, and I brought Anita to school every morning. I went to pick her up at my mother’s house at a quarter to eight. I left my apartment wearing a sweat suit at 7:20. She would b
e waiting for me in her little blue skirt with her backpack ready. She was never late, always there waiting for me. When I returned home, I showered, got dressed, and ate breakfast. I remember that my showers were endless. A sudden memory, like rays of sunlight filtering in between Persian blinds: I would see myself in Pauline’s apartment in the rue de Bourgogne, listening to songs by Brassens, eating Camembert cheese melted over thin slices of apple. I tried to imagine Giuseppe’s long, thin, lively nose, his embrace, his laugh: Anche tra i leoni ci stanno i culatoni, Even among lions there are fags . . . I tried uselessly to reconstruct the expression on his face when he opened the door for me: Voilà la plus belle! It was no use. Faces, even the ones we love, fade away.

  I would emerge from the shower with my fingertips wrinkled. I remember that often, the room full of steam, I would shake my head and say to myself in a loud voice, as if to someone else: “I’m really tired, too tired. I can’t do it anymore.” Sometimes, as I was drying myself with my thick towel, white and heavy, I would stop for no reason. I would stand there looking at the ceiling or the bathroom tiles and think about nothing until the cold made me snap out of it. “I’m exhausted,” I would repeat. “I’m really exhausted.” It was hard for me not to get back in bed. Some mornings, I did.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Though it was hard for me to admit, I had started to fall in love with Flaco. He infected me. I thought about his gestures, and I felt myself copying them. Without consciously trying, I imitated his way of walking and moving. He hypnotized me. I wanted to help him. Why? He was the strong one, after all. I was a submissive lover, as if my submission would allow me to participate in his power. I felt that his hands, when they touched me, shaped me anew as if my flesh were soft clay, that old image that my feminist “self” hated and thought she’d overcome. My humiliation had undone me, and only another human being could re-create me. Does what I’m saying make sense to you, or do you think I just wanted to survive, or that I’d whored myself out, period? Because I knew he could kill me with those same hands, with one single, silent blow. That frightened me. He would know how to make all the evidence disappear. A faint and dangerous excitement ran through my body.

  I see myself in the half-light, my heart pounding as my tongue explores his strong muscles. He wasn’t what he seemed to be, either. No one is. That’s why that house existed, hidden away on a plot of land in Malloco. And I can skip over details and imagine the situation all over again for you. I don’t even know anymore. They left me irremediably broken and disguised. You know? I can’t stop thinking, as I talk to you, about what you’ll do with what I tell you. Maybe your book will be a barely disguised report. I see a problem with that: the weight of the real could suffocate your novel. And this story, as you’ve seen, is plenty unpleasant. It couldn’t be any other way. A novel should be constructed as the dream of a poet, don’t you think? Maybe no one will know. But in any case, what happened, happened. You can be sure of that. I’m not talking just to talk. My story continues to be a testimony—of course, it’s a testimony without innocence. I shape myself in words for you, I lift myself up on my own air, and that’s what I am, then, a flow of sound that emanates from the chords in my throat and that I put within your reach, nothing more. For you, there’s nothing external with which you can contrast me. I’m Narcissus, constructing my mirror of water and looking at myself, and you watch me do it.

  With an old-fashioned flourish of his arm, Flaco introduces me to Jerónimo, a tall guy, very young, younger than me, with sleepy eyes. We’re in the club in Malloco. WILD CAT, I managed to read on a discreet neon sign over the entrance. Jerónimo is wearing a purple shirt, untucked and unbuttoned, over a white T-shirt. He looks me in the eyes, he looks at my breasts, he looks me in the eyes, he looks at my lips, he looks at my breasts. He can’t stop looking at me. He smiles, timid, or intimidated, maybe. I like that. He offers me a sip of his drink and starts to laugh. I don’t like it at all. That vulgar mixture of red wine and Coca-Cola makes me choke. He tastes my pisco sour and praises it, amusement in his eyes. I like him already. He hands me his joint, which is almost out. I draw in deeply. It’s strong. Flaco’s turn. It goes around again. On the dance floor there are people dancing in pairs, in threes and fours. Jerónimo tells me that the fat guy dancing with the pretty dark-skinned girl is a fag, that the pretty, dark girl is jealous, she’s trying to seduce him but nothing happens. He laughs with his sleepy eyes. I take another hit on his joint.

  I want to dance. The three of us are already laughing a lot. And laughing, Flaco introduces me to Rabbit, who has a long face and a laugh that shows his cheerful rabbit’s teeth. Jerónimo’s joint goes out and I say I’m going to cry and he lights another one. His hand with its short, thick fingers. He passes it to me. It’s Colombian herb, he tells me. We’re dancing pressed close together. I rest my head trustingly on his shoulder. Jerónimo takes the spliff from me, takes a hit, and puts it in my mouth again. Rabbit is shorter than me. Flaco runs his index finger along my lips, taking his time, as if he wanted his finger to memorize them. And I’m dancing with three men, Jerónimo’s rough beard sometimes scratching against my chin.

  You know what? If I had been a man, I would have wanted to visit whorehouses, lots of whorehouses. I would have been a whoring motherfucker . . . That kind of woman has always intrigued me. Flaco hands me a piscola and leaves me dancing with Jerónimo and Rabbit. But I grab his arm as he passes, I’m afraid of him leaving, and I’m with three men again. We dance in an embrace. A slow song comes on and I kiss Flaco and I stay with him, almost not dancing, and we kiss. I stand on tiptoe to kiss him. A hand on my back that isn’t his. I feel different hands touching me, but I go on kissing Flaco. He takes my arm and leads me away.

  We cross the gallery, go up a staircase, and Flaco takes out the key they gave him at the entrance. He opens the door of a private room, a small salon with a vulgar and decadent elegance. At the back, a canopied bed and a bathroom. All four of us are there. The music doesn’t pound as much here, but it’s the same music as downstairs and it doesn’t lose its hypnotizing power. We go on kissing, barely dancing, pressed tight, and Flaco’s hand unclasps my bra. Jerónimo and Rabbit are watching us now, sitting—sprawled, more like it—on frayed embroidered armchairs that could have been Louis XV—cheap copies, of course. Between them, a black table, lacquered, and a faded black velvet sofa. Flaco takes a blue bag and an oval mirror from his pocket. He makes lines using his MasterCard Gold. I see the enormous orifices of my powdery nose in the mirror. Flaco tells me to take off my blouse. I tell him OK, as long as he takes his shirt off first. He snorts a line and complies. Knowing I’m being watched is tantalizing. Those red-rimmed eyes. Will I do it? I bite one of Flaco’s nipples. I have my eyes closed. We move as if to a lullaby.

  I open my eyes. Who are these men looking at me? Am I still the same person if I like that they want me? But I do like it. That’s why I’m looking back at them. I look at them without shame. Like you look over a new car or a purebred bull. I’m excited by the imminence of a dangerous threshold. I’m excited by a magnetic force pulling me in an unknown direction. Flaco takes my blouse off. My bra is held up only by the lift of my firm breasts. Flaco bites it and lets it fall to the ground. We go on dancing like that, so close, skin against skin. I’m not hearing with my ears, now. It’s something inside me. The strings of the bass run through me, and I vibrate as if my body’s depths were a guitar. I sink my hands into the back pockets of Flaco’s jeans.

  “You have to do something for them,” he whispers in my ear. “Look at them, they’re going crazy, you’ve got them hypnotized,” and he laughs.

  Jerónimo looks back at me with such languid eyes. The rest of his body is completely in shadow.

  “Tell them to come over here,” Flaco says to me. “Tell them.”

  I waver. I hesitate.

  “Tell them,” Flaco gently insists.

  I hesitate. I reach out an uncertain hand toward them.

  “Tell them: come and
dance.”

  I obey. And when I do, a levee breaks. It was a matter of beginning, of crossing the threshold. I’m breathing hard from nervousness, agitation, from damned and wretched pleasure: their desire drives me crazy. Look, I think to myself, I’m trembling.

  “Come and dance,” I repeat in a muted little voice. I’m looking at them without daring to take my arms from over my breasts. “Come.”

  They surround me, they embrace me, men’s skin on my back. The four of us dance slowly and the anticipation of I don’t know what suffocates me. Am I still myself?

  “Show yourself,” Flaco tells me with a hard exhale. “Let them see you. It’s what I want, for them to see you.”

  It’s what I want, too, though I didn’t know it before. It’s exactly what I want. Then I get on the sofa and stand up and my breasts fulminate them. I see it in their faltering eyes, in their suddenly dry lips that their tongues cannot moisten. Flaco undoes my belt with his mouth. I help him. My skirt falls to the floor.

  “Make them happy, girl,” he tells me. “Yes, make them happy. Now,” he orders me with an excitement rooted in pain.

  I’m staring into Jerónimo’s eyes. And he looks back but then lowers his gaze to my breasts and returns to my eyes. I have him, I feel it. They’re going to be dreaming of me. I get down from the sofa and go over to Rabbit, his rabbit teeth behind a trembling smile. I brush his chest with my nipples, I kneel down, open his belt, and slowly, very slowly I lower his zipper. His pants come off. I look at Flaco, at Jerónimo, his feverish eyes, his half-open mouth. “I have them,” I think to myself. Rabbit, in only his black underpants, is at a precise distance from me. I put out my tongue, stretch it out, I feel it vibrate in the air like a viper’s. Flaco’s gaze rests on me. My pointed tongue is getting closer. I know what I want. My tongue gets longer still. I look at Flaco and at Jerónimo. I’ve got these fuckers now! And my tongue reaches its mark. One touch only, one touch, and it retreats.