Leapfrog
Page 12
Cossack dispelled any remaining tension when she went back out to the street and returned with the news that the patrol car had left.
“God is with us,” Coro said. “You, Madame, put on some music. You, Nefertiti, dance for everyone. May these last hours be filled with enjoyment and happiness. Rum! Bring the rum!”
Again, it was Cossack who left the room and came back dragging a box of liquor.
“Hand it out, hand it out,” Coro said. “Let everyone drink, let everyone laugh, let everyone fornicate.”
An hour later, Coro’s room looked like a Roman hall in the time of Caligula. Salsa music was playing, the people were emptying bottles in three swigs and opening more. Manzano the poet was rolling around in the corner with Cossack. The Madame was riding Coro’s flanks completely naked. Melanio Webster, Whitey, and Danilo watched Nefertiti’s striptease in fascination, as she moved her hips with more panache than the fabulous Tongolele. Thus, dancing, the adolescent girl went over to Danilo and started to remove his shirt.
“Macho, macho man. Do you swear that tomorrow you will kill that infamous Cornelio Rojas?”
“The die is cast.” Danilo responded with conviction.
“Then take me, my King. Make me remember you forever.”
They both fell down on a bed of old newspapers and Danilo, his penis hard as an elephant hunter’s sword, broke Nefertiti’s resistant membrane with one resolute push and merged with her in a bloody, but delicious, embrace, that reached an other-worldly delirium as the girl contorted her hips on the floor like a lusty salamander.
Thus they spent the last night, until six in the morning when Coro woke them all up with the national anthem blasting on the radio, and the exciting news that there were only five hours left for the country’s history to take a 180 degree turn.
“Danilo, macho man, do you still have your courage?”
“Give me the pistol,” Danilo answered firmly.
Coro gave him the weapon and Danilo felt it once more at his hip, again transmitting a pleasant sensation of power. He studied the chamber and counted nine bullets. If just one of them entered Cornelio’s head, that would be enough. And if Qaddafi misbehaved, another bullet would be for him.
The Madame turned up the volume on the battery-operated radio and the announcer’s voice came on again, informing them that there were more than a million people lined up along the streets through which the convoy would pass.
“Grab your flag and your poster and show up at this act of international solidarity. Let’s show the world that our revolution is invincible and that our people march with conviction alongside our Maximum Leader.”
“They must’ve left the capital building already,” Coro reasoned. “Traveling fifteen miles an hour, it’s possible they’ll pass by the fatal corner at noon. What time is it?”
“Nine,” the Madame said.
“Well,” Coro summarized. “We’ll leave here at eleven. You, Danilo, the most macho of all machos, do you have a final wish?”
“Yes. I want to bathe, put on clean clothes, and, if possible, shave and put on a lot of cologne.”
“Madame,” Coro said. “Make sure you give him a good bath. Look in the closet for some clean shirts and look for a bottle of Brut cologne among my belongings.”
The Madame took Danilo by the arm and led him gently to one of the bathrooms, the cleanest one, since the others were clogged and the toilets overflowed with filth.
“You manly man,” the Madame said once they were both in the bathroom. “What an honor to bathe you, you who will make me free in two hours. Can I kiss your wee-wee?”
“Do it,” Danilo said. He was terse, had a vague look on his face and the nervous tic in his eyes had come back along with the ulcer pain.
“I’m going to die, dammit,” Danilo whispered.
“You will never die completely,” the Madame said as she began to soap him up with a sponge.
“Ferryman, ferryman . . . all of it is the fault of that damned ferryman.”
“Has your resolve weakened again? Are you feeling afraid again?”
“No,” Danilo said. And he repeated, firmly, “The die is cast.”
Once he was dry, dressed and perfumed, he took the beautiful pistol in his hands and thought about the most unfortunate events of his life. He couldn’t find one day of happiness among his memories. Cornelio Rojas had robbed him of thirty years of freedom. Thirty years in which he had imposed the law of his balls on the people and had crushed all rebellion.
No, Danilo wasn’t feeling cowardly. Rather, he was impatient to have the tyrant before him to empty the contents of the pistol into his head.
“You look so handsome!” the Madame said when she saw him dressed up and coiffed. “You look worthy of a photo.”
“I don’t want any photos. What I want is for all of this to happen quickly, and that my death be immediate. But only after seeing him fall over with a bullet in his head.”
“That’s how real men talk,” the Madame said. “Come on, let’s go back to Coro’s room.”
They went out. In Coro’s room, everyone was listening to the radio. The announcer informed them that Cornelio Rojas’s convoy had just entered First Avenue.
“We’ve got him within our reach now,” Coro said. “Cossack, hand out the flags and the posters of the tyrant. We all have to keep a distance of two meters. Go on out. Quickly!”
One by one, they started exiting the old house, carrying flags and posters of Cornelio Rojas. Down Fourth Street came waves of people yelling happily,
“Cornelio, Cornelio, we love Cornelio!”
The conspirators joined the masses and started to approach the corner of attack. When they arrived at the site, they all placed themselves in the front line, near Danilo, who more than ever, felt the cold pistol under his shirt. Suddenly, the clamor rose. On the main street, Cornelio Rojas’s convertible limousine appeared in the distance, surrounded by dozens of plainclothes policeman who were looking all around them like mad dogs.
“Are you feeling confident, big guy?” Coro said into Danilo’s ear.
“My fate is sealed,” was the young man’s response.
A few steps away, Cossack made the sign of the cross discreetly so the crowd wouldn’t see her. The Madame gave Danilo a last kiss on the ear. Melanio Webster, who knew how to draw, was trying to quickly capture Danilo’s tense face with charcoal and some paper.
The convoy got closer. The flags waved happily and pictures of Cornelio were raised by hundreds of joyous hands.
And then something happened. Something that was not in the bunker inhabitants plans. A block before arriving at Danilo’s corner, Cornelio Rojas and Qaddafi got out of the limousine and started to walk between the two rows of cheering people. They talked to the people, kissed several children, and shook hands with some old men. In the blink of an eye, Danilo Castellanos found himself before Cornelio Rojas in the flesh and the tyrant was looking at him — his eyes radiating confidence and self-assuredness. Breathing with aplomb, knowing he was in absolute control of the situation, Cornelio leaned over to kiss a newborn, caressed the white hair of a teary-eyed old woman, gave a cigar to an old man leaning on a cane who seemed a hundred years old, and suddenly, he extended a soft, warm hand to Danilo.
“And you? What do you do for the homeland, my fellow countryman?”
“I’m a high school history teacher.”
“Keep fighting then, my fellow countryman. The revolution needs many men like you.”
He withdrew his hand. Danilo slumped over and, for a few seconds, felt he was about to pass out. He was afraid that the pistol could be seen through his shirt. But no, the crucial moment had already passed. The opportunity of a lifetime had been squandered. Cornelio Rojas and Moammar Qaddafi got into the limousine again, and continued at high speed toward the presidential palace. The groups dispersed. Danilo hung his head and started to walk to Coro’s big house as if he were a zombie. Then he felt a kick in his shin: it was Cossack. A bump to t
he head: it was Whitey; spit on his face: it was the Madame. The horrendous insults in his ear came from Nefertiti. The foot stepping on his was Melanio Webster’s, and Coro’s shadowy guffaw announced terrible punishment and humiliation. He continued walking slowly, without protest, toward the old, colonial style house that was the last bastion of resistance against tyranny. His resolve had weakened. Now they would always call him “the Rat,” and he would live with the rats, in the filthy basement, eating on the floor and sleeping over puddles of putrid water.
But all was not lost. The following month would bring the arrival of Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader. Another parade like this one would promenade down one of the city’s main streets. Perhaps then. Perhaps then!
Copyright © 2013 by the Heirs of Guillermo Rosales
Translation copyright © 2013 by Anna Kushner
Published by arrangement with the Heirs of Guillermo Rosales.
“Leapfrog” was originally published as El juego de la viola (Ediciones Universal, Miami, 1994).
All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or website review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.
First published as a New Directions Paperbook (NDP1267) in 2013
ISBN 978-0-811-22327-0 (e-book)
Design by Erik Rieselbach
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Rosales, Guillermo.
[El juego de la viola. English]
Leapfrog and Other Stories / Guillermo Rosales ; translated from the Spanish by Anna Kushner.
pages cm
“A New Directions Paperbook Original.”
I. Kushner, Anna. II. Title.
PQ7390.R665J813 2013
863'.64—dc23 2013022652
New Directions Books are published for James Laughlin
by New Directions Publishing Corporation
80 Eighth Avenue, New York 10011
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM NEW DIRECTIONS
by Guillermo Rosales
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The Halfway House