Made in Saturn
Page 14
“Saturn ate his children so they wouldn’t destroy him,” the old man said, raising his voice above the dembow from the colmado. “Saturn was a son of a bitch, like Balaguer.” Between each sentence he sucked so hard on his cigarette that a centimeter of paper burned off with each drag. “Jupiter’s mom hid him on an island and when he came of age, he castrated his father,” he continued. “His virility gone, Saturn turned into a mortal and was crowned a king on Earth. His reign is known as the Golden Age.” His tone was sarcastic. “There were no thieves, no murderers, and wealth was divided up equally.” The old man gave the finger to heaven and shouted, “Saturn, son of a fucking bitch!”
Niurka’s little cell phone started ringing again. It was his father. He’d rather smell Céspedes’s shit than get hit with José Alfredo’s offers of progression. He thought of Niurka’s breast, of the job with Mar. He thought of the buccaneers he had painted in Sosúa on scholarship. He would have liked to show them to his teacher. He went over to the old man and grabbed his wrist, saying, “Maestro, I want to show you one of my works.” Céspedes was silent. Argenis closed his eyes to see it better, and began to tell him:
“Two men are skinning an animal. They are buccaneers in linen shirts stained with blood. The stains are ocher because the blood is dry, but the blood on the grass at their feet hasn’t yet dried. A shifting mass of ochers and reds is accumulating on top of the sap-green of the grass; in that puddle, the paint has been applied directly from the tube onto the canvas. A few blades of grass are very precise, like scientific illustrations, and that precision in the midst of all the imprecision mimics the way vision moves in and out of focus. The blood on the grass is the blood from the cow they are opening up. On the right of the painting, a black man is cutting it open, a purple rag around his head and a period weapon on his shoulder. A musket? No, it’s an arquebus. He is a man with powerful muscles. The muscles have a Goyaesque appearance – the brushwork is thick and appears careless, but that carelessness is the brute force unleashed by the painter’s hand. The muscles convey that force. On the other side of the cow is a boy with much lighter skin, long hair, and a felt hat. He is grabbing one edge of the gash his friend has created and pulling to free the skin. He has a knife between his teeth. The teeth, small and ashy, peek around the silver blade. The light glints annoyingly off the blade, and his lips brush against it dangerously. Both of their hands are made of thick points of light, like the ornaments on a chair in a Vermeer. The cow’s head, applied with a spatula, like the features of the men, hangs to one side. The black man is holding up a hoof, which I put everything into. Caravaggio would gladly have signed that hoof. The hairs around it, Maestro, what a pleasure they are! Here and there the paint runs, because I spilled the melted ice from my drink on the canvas – I was painting with it laid out on the floor and I took advantage of the accident. From the hole the men are opening in the cow a vision appears. Water – clear, shallow water, like in Boca Chica. The buccaneers are looking into the depths of the water, as if waiting for something.”
Céspedes took off his Ray-Ban sunglasses and Argenis could see his blue-green eyes, like balls of marble. He was crying. Like a bird exposing its wet wings to the sun, he opened his arms wide, the way he did to move about. He went to a metal filing cabinet, all its drawers open and full of brushes. He caressed their tips, pulled a few out and put them back again. Then he crossed to a work table covered in dirty rags, dried-up paint tubes, and electricity bills. When he touched its surface, several used plastic cups fell to the ground. He finally reached a wooden Cohiba cigar box on one corner, opened it, and took out a brush. It was an angled brush with honey-colored bristles. The old man ran his fingers over the mahogany-wood handle, stroked his chin with the bristles, and told Argenis, “I bought this brush in Italy in 1976, on my only trip to Europe, and I swore I’d give it to my heir whenever I found him. It’s for you, my dear Argenis.”
Now a bolero by Alberto Beltrán was drifting up from the colmado. That overblown, nasal sentimentalism was both heroic and virile, and Argenis knew he’d think of it every time he used that gift. The old man asked him to help him lie down, clutching his pupil’s arm and emitting small grunts until they reached the bed with the wicker headboard. Argenis removed his shoes, helped him get his legs up, and took his shirt off with difficulty. As he was doing this, Céspedes asked, sleepily, “Did you ever find the woman with the sweet cunt?” Argenis didn’t answer, just covered him with a Mexican blanket that had once been orange. The old man snored into his pillow immediately, and his snores attracted a wrinkled gecko to the nightstand from where it would translucently watch over its twin brother’s repose.
Real light. Not the light projected by pointless human moons. Not the light that attracts moths. Sunlight, severe, impossible to look at directly with open, unprotected eyes. It descended anciently onto everything, without the mercy of clouds. It warmed the earth, attracted the hunger of plants, sliced into the corners of buildings with shadows, turned material into silhouettes, like a scalpel. That morning was made of light, the hot air coming through the window of his Aunt Niurka’s car was made of light. Argenis put his hand out to feel the heat and the breeze, relaxed his wrist so the air would push against his hand, deform it, dance with it.
In the background, in an emerald-colored sea, tiny fishermen were tossing out their nets, surrounded by the golden sparks that a mysterious spirit was showering over the water, their bodies reflecting the blessing. That excess was grounds for complaint, for curses, for fatigue. Harvester of blisters, heart attacks, rot. It dried up rivers, burned down forests, that indomitable angel of destruction. In some places the light was so great that the asphalt turned white, like in Céspedes’ paintings. The light softened the grays, turned the cars in the distance into liquid vibrations. He wanted to paint that light, to make it obey him.
Beside him, Niurka was looking for something on the radio, but the reception was bad and you could only make out bits of words. The car speakers were groaning like a UFO about to land in an episode of The X-Files. His aunt put her hand between her seat and the emergency break, took out a manila envelope, and passed it to him. The envelope had his name on it and was sealed. Argenis used his teeth to open it and inside he found a negative. It was a 6x6 negative from a Rolleiflex. “Tony Catrain left it for you. Charlie told him you were back in the country,” said Niurka. “That’s José Alfredo at a demonstration at the Autonomous University in 1969.”
Holding the negative between the sun and his eye, he could make out his father. The then-athletic mulatto looked white and the reflection of the sun off the asphalt was black. It took him a few moments to identify the objects surrounding him: they were car tires on fire. The smoke coming out of the burnt tires was the same transparent white. It was an extraterrestrial landscape, like the one Neil Armstrong had marked with his boots that same year. In that strange land, as far away as the moon, José Alfredo was fighting against the class structure, against the Balaguer dictatorship, against the hired thugs who were murdering his friends. His arm was outstretched, hurling a Molotov cocktail toward a police force that did not appear in the photo. He exuded the strength and agility of a Muhammad Ali, and the tight pants and tense biceps could have passed for those of Johnny Ventura. José Alfredo was not a student; he was a leader in the Dominican Popular Movement who had only gotten as far as eighth grade. Back then he was a kind of living god. He had trained in Cuba, he knew Che and was friends with Caamaño, he had recruited hundreds of young people for the constitutionalist side during the war of 1965. Aged fourteen, he had gotten the scar that crossed his forehead from a machete, during a strike, completing the legend.
He returned the negative to its place, the reception suddenly improved, and they heard the pastor on an evangelical station requesting donations for a brother. Argenis felt serene and happy thanks to the dollars in his wallet and the things that filled his suitcase and backpack: new clothes, food, presents. The cell phone Niurka had
loaned him rang once more. It was his mother. He listened to her for a few minutes. The more obsolete her advice, the more Argenis loved her. She was happy for him, happy he had sold some pieces, but she didn’t understand why he had rejected his father’s offer. It was a good opportunity – cultural attaché in a Dominican embassy in Europe.
When he’d hung up he turned off the device and stuck it into Niurka’s pocket. Since he still had time they stopped by a coconut vendor. The man poured the water from the coconuts into two Styrofoam cups with ice and, after cutting the flesh free, he passed them the open shells to eat from. They went down to the rocky shore and found a couple of stones to sit on. The white coconut flesh reminded him of Céspedes’s paintings again, the light everywhere.
“Why are you going back to Cuba?” Niurka asked, and he told her that he had left something undone. She stood up and ceremoniously opened her arms to the sea, then put her hands on Argenis’s head without saying a word, just as his grandmother Consuelo had done so many times. He didn’t know what to do, so he fixed his gaze on an enormous anthill. Life bubbled from that hole, flowing like blood, in and out. Some ants were carrying immense pieces of coconut, like slaves; some were scaling the hills of even bigger pieces.
When they got to the airport Niurka gave him two kisses, Spanish-style, something she did outside Spain only when she was drunk, and wished him good luck. He could feel his new suit, the suit his father’s tailor had made him, attracting approving looks. He felt healthy and clean, as if an invisible detergent had shaken up his insides. As he checked in at the Cuban Airlines ticket counter, the polyester uniforms of the employees and the seventies design of their lapel pins greeted him like an anachronistic cosmogony. He felt slightly apprehensive and thought about the ants with their immense loads. He wasn’t shedding his past – he was confronting it. He was going to look for Susana.
In the security line, some baseball players were cracking crude jokes and telling stories about the night before. Those enormous mulattos had escaped from poverty thanks to their ability to throw balls at ninety miles an hour. He remembered the negative. How many miles per hour had that Molotov been traveling? As he put his navy-blue suede moccasins into the tray, a lump rose in his throat. The love his old man felt for him came to him unblemished, like the homemade bomb at the feet of the police. He looked down at his bare feet, at his flat feet for which the army would have rejected him, a pair of feet that ought to last his whole life and that walked because he ordered them: walk.
With profound thanks to all the friends and relatives who in one way or another supported the writing of this book: Raúl Recio, Miguel Peña, Miguelín de Mena, Bernardo Vega, Abilio Estévez, Viriato Piantini, Lorgia García Peña, Luis Amed Irizarry, Rubén Millán, Gonzalo Frómeta, Sebastián González, Daniel González, and Noelia Quintero Herencia.
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Current & Upcoming Books
01
Juan Pablo Villalobos, Down the Rabbit Hole
translated from the Spanish by Rosalind Harvey
02
Clemens Meyer, All the Lights
translated from the German by Katy Derbyshire
03
Deborah Levy, Swimming Home
04
Iosi Havilio, Open Door
translated from the Spanish by Beth Fowler
05
Oleg Zaionchkovsky, Happiness is Possible
translated from the Russian by Andrew Bromfield
06
Carlos Gamerro, The Islands
translated from the Spanish by Ian Barnett
07
Christoph Simon, Zbinden’s Progress
translated from the German by Donal McLaughlin
08
Helen DeWitt, Lightning Rods
09
Deborah Levy, Black Vodka: ten stories
10
Oleg Pavlov, Captain of the Steppe
translated from the Russian by Ian Appleby
11
Rodrigo de Souza Leão, All Dogs are Blue
translated from the Portuguese by Zoë Perry & Stefan Tobler
12
Juan Pablo Villalobos, Quesadillas
translated from the Spanish by Rosalind Harvey
13
Iosi Havilio, Paradises
translated from the Spanish by Beth Fowler
14
Ivan Vladislavić, Double Negative
15
Benjamin Lytal, A Map of Tulsa
16
Ivan Vladislavić, The Restless Supermarket
17
Elvira Dones, Sworn Virgin
translated from the Italian by Clarissa Botsford
18
Oleg Pavlov, The Matiushin Case
translated from the Russian by Andrew Bromfield
19
Paulo Scott, Nowhere People
translated from the Portuguese by Daniel Hahn
20
Deborah Levy, An Amorous Discourse in the Suburbs of Hell
21
Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel, By Night the Mountain Burns
translated from the Spanish by Jethro Soutar
22
SJ Naudé, The Alphabet of Birds
translated from the Afrikaans by the author
23
Niyati Keni, Esperanza Street
24
Yuri Herrera, Signs Preceding the End of the World
translated from the Spanish by Lisa Dillman
25
Carlos Gamerro, The Adventure of the Busts of Eva Perón
translated from the Spanish by Ian Barnett
26
Anne Cuneo, Tregian’s Ground
translated from the French by Roland Glasser and Louise Rogers Lalaurie
27
Angela Readman, Don’t Try This at Home
28
Ivan Vladislavić, 101 Detectives
29
Oleg Pavlov, Requiem for a Soldier
translated from the Russian by Anna Gunin
30
Haroldo Conti, Southeaster
translated from the Spanish by Jon Lindsay Miles
31
Ivan Vladislavić, The Folly
32
Susana Moreira Marques, Now and at the Hour of Our Death
33
Lina Wolff, Bret Easton Ellis and the Other Dogs
translated from the Swedish by Frank Perry
34
Anakana Schofield, Martin John
35
Joanna Walsh, Vertigo
36
Wolfgang Bauer, Crossing the Sea
translated from the German by Sarah Pybus
with photographs by Stanislav Krupař
37
Various, Lunatics, Lovers and Poets:
Twelve Stories after Cervantes and Shakespeare
38
Yuri Herrera, The Transmigration of Bodies
translated from the Spanish by Lisa Dillman
39
César Aira, The Seamstress and the Wind
translated from the Spanish by Rosalie Knecht
40
Juan Pablo Villalobos, I’ll Sell You a Dog
translated from the Spanish by Rosalind Harvey
41
Enrique Vila-Matas, Vampire in Love
translated from the Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa
42
Emmanuelle Pagano, Trysting
translated from the French by Jennifer Higgins and Sophie Lewis
43
Arno Geiger, The Old King in His Exile
translated from the German by Stefan Tobler
44
Michelle Tea, Black Wave