King Bongo

by Thomas Sanchez

  “I can’t leave, I’ve come too far. Sweet Maria sent me.”

  “Sweet Maria! Why didn’t you say so? Come with me!”

  The specter spread the arms of its cloak and appeared to sail away down the corridor.

  Bongo followed. He heard soft moans from behind some closed doors that he passed, from behind other doors came giddy, ironic laughter. A strange scent clung in the air, the mingled odors of sterilizing alcohol, burning cloves and rotting oranges.

  The specter stopped before a door, and from the folds of its cloak withdrew an iron key.

  Bongo shouted angrily, “You keep her locked up!”

  “For her own safety.”

  “But she’s trapped inside!”

  “On the contrary, the world is locked out.”

  “Give me that.” Bongo grabbed the key. “You aren’t going to lock me up! Besides, how do I know she’s even in there?”

  “That depends on whether you truly believe in Saint Lazarus.”

  The specter turned and glided away.

  Bongo unlocked the door and stepped inside, closing the door. The tiny room was empty except for a cot against a stone wall. Through the slot of a narrow doorway was a small garden. Among the flowers stood a figure dressed in a flowing, bridelike linen gown. The figure slowly turned. Bongo heard bold laughter, a familiar sound he had known since childhood.

  Bongo stepped into the garden. His sister came toward him, her head and face covered by a gauzy veil. Her laughter became more insistent, washing over him, almost hysterical. Maybe she had been undone by all that had happened to her, perhaps she had gone mad. He wanted to take her into his arms, to hold and protect her. But she could be dressed this way to hide something hideous, a scarring disfigurement from the Tropicana bombing. Or maybe she was a leper.

  She stopped laughing.

  Bongo took her in his arms.

  “Oh, thank you,” she sighed. “I was afraid that if you thought I was a leper you wouldn’t hold me.”

  Bongo would not allow himself tears. Together they could survive, together they were one. Her breathing deepened. Bongo felt her strength surge as she gave herself up to who they were together. Bells began ringing.

  “Those are the bells for morning prayers,” she said. “We’re supposed to go into our cells and pray. But we will talk, like we did as children.” She took his hand and led the way back into the cell and closed the door.

  In the enclosed space there was the odd scent that Bongo had smelled earlier. He didn’t know if the scent was coming from this cell, or if it had permeated everything.

  His sister sat on the cot against the wall. She pushed the veil above her face. In the dim light, he could only see the whites of her eyes and the white flash of her teeth as she smiled.

  She asked, “Can you see my face?”

  He couldn’t see her ebony skin. Perhaps she was disfigured and would only reveal herself in darkness. “I can’t see very well in this light.”

  “Come sit next to me.”

  Bongo sat close to her on the cot. She lowered her veil, obscuring her face.

  “You’re still beautiful,” he said.

  “My skin is not falling off. I’m not a leper.”

  “It wouldn’t make any difference to me if you were.”

  She reached her hand out from beneath the linen gown.

  Bongo took her hand and kissed it, not caring if it was scarred from a bomb blast or disfigured from disease.

  She held his hand tightly. Ever since they were children, her black hand in his white hand had seemed to him a beautiful miracle.

  “You don’t have to worry,” she assured him. “I’m not hurt at all. I don’t have a mark on me.”

  “Then why are you dressed like this?”

  “The nuns wanted me to look like the others. There are some here”—her voice trailed off—“who must be covered.”

  “But you have nothing to hide.”

  “Oh, but I do. If I’m here, and dressed like this, it is difficult for people to find me.”

  “I’ve found you.” Bongo squeezed her hand. “I’m going to get you out of here.”

  “But I don’t want to go.”

  “I can protect you.”

  “I am protected.”

  “By prehistoric nuns?”

  “And others.”

  “Who?”

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “I understand they aren’t here now.”

  Bongo got up and walked across the room to a shuttered window. “What does this look out onto?”

  “The entrance.”

  Bongo pulled the shutter open. Through the dusty glass he had a view of the faceless angels around the fountain. On the inside of the windowpane flies buzzed and knocked themselves against glass, trying to escape.

  “Are you expecting someone?” she asked.

  “Yes.” Bongo drummed nervously on the glass. “Do you remember diving for coins when we were children?”

  “I remember everything.”

  “Try to forget the bad parts.”

  “I can’t.”

  “People grow up.”

  “They don’t outgrow the color of their skin.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m a black person.”

  “You’re talented and intelligent. You can have the life you want.”

  “If you were dressed in my skin, you’d know different.”

  Bongo drummed his fingers harder against the glass, aiming for the flies. He knew they had come here because of the odd, sickening stench. He heard the tapping of his sister’s foot behind him. She was keeping time to his drumming.

  “If you were in my skin,” she continued, “you would see through the lie. You would see that this island is a prison. Most of us are still slaves.”

  Bongo kept drumming.

  Her voice rose. “The masters want to get their white hands on me, to treat me as their private Cuba.”

  One of Bongo’s drumming fingers pinned a fly, crushing it against glass.

  “There is no one to liberate us,” she continued. “We must fight to liberate ourselves.”

  “That’s why you were willing to plant a bomb in the Tropicana?”

  “Yes!”

  “Innocent people, even your own brother, were at risk.”

  “No one is exempt. I could have been killed too.”

  Another fly died under the furious beat of Bongo’s drumming. Behind him, her tapping foot kept his rhythm as she talked urgently.

  “If we can’t wake up the world to our condition, then we must wake up our countrymen.”

  “And bombs in public places are the alarm clock?”

  “If that’s the only way to blast people out of their complacency!” she shouted with conviction. “I will bomb the casinos, the offices, the restaurants, the theaters! I will destroy all the government goats sucking off the bottle of greed! You don’t see this country as I do!”

  “I’m not blind. I see the poverty. I see the kids with tapeworms hanging out of their asses.”

  “That’s the least of it. People are so poor they’re eating boiled fleas.” She laughed, the same ironic laugh he heard earlier. “Two fleas for a family of eight.”

  “Average people are doing better than they did in General Machado’s day.”

  “Better isn’t good enough, when the average wage is only a hundred and fifty pesos a year. That’s not even half of what a person makes in the poorest state in America.”

  “Your university professor taught you well.”

  “I didn’t need him to see the truth. I lived it as a kid. You know that.”

  Bongo smashed another fly beneath the flurry of his fingers. He remembered sleeping on a dirt floor, lice crawling on his scalp, the scent of shit reeking up from open mud trenches, the festering sores on his sister’s skin, the pus running from her infected eyes, he couldn’t keep the flies from covering her face. He stopped drumming. Dead flies were tattooed across the g
lass window. He stared at the smashed black bodies oozing white guts, as if they posed a question. “They don’t bleed, do they?”

  His sister was silent. She studied the tattooed design littered across the window. “No,” she said softly, “they don’t. But neither do ladybugs.”

  Bongo was startled by her words. They made him feel like he did as a kid, that she was the one who was more aware of life’s harsh realities. He remembered his father’s hands beating in a rhythmic slap on both of their shaved heads. He heard his father’s song: “The Bongo has two heads, man and woman, hate and love, war and peace! Those heads are always at odds! The Bongo is the same drum!”

  Through his father’s singing, Bongo heard his sister calling from the far side of the room.

  “I will always love you, but we must separate.”

  A flood was rising to tear them apart. Bongo struggled to reach her before it was too late. He finally got to her. He held her. She opened her mouth to say more, but so many tears flowed beneath her veil that they flooded her mouth, flooded the floor, flooded the room, flooded the world. In the torrent, turtles, sharks and dead people tumbled, it was impossible to resist the current.

  Bongo was again a drowning boy in a drowning universe, and his sister was being ripped from his side. He grabbed her hand tightly and kicked his feet in the murky water, fighting the roaring crush of gravity. He heard his sister’s voice. “I have to leave you! I have to cross over to the other side!” He kicked harder, rising up, breaking the surface and gasping for air, his face pressed to the window of his sister’s cell. Outside, the sky was clear blue, and beneath it a black Plymouth drove up to the fountain of faceless angels. The car’s back door flew open. Zapata jumped out. Bongo felt his sister’s hand slip from his. She was gone.

  Zapata stood in front of the fountain of faceless angels, gazing up through his dark sunglasses at the convent’s steep stone facade. He ran a finger over his mustache, his lips curved in a smile. He had to admit that he never would have thought of looking for her here. He glanced over at Bongo’s Rocket and his smile became bigger; the bird dog had flushed the bird.

  Pedro and Paulo walked up behind Zapata and stood next to him.

  “Captain,” Pedro said nervously, “maybe it’s not such a good idea to go inside. They say the nuns here are the cruelest in Cuba.”

  “That’s right,” Paulo added. “They’re left over from the Spanish Inquisition and dress like witches.”

  Zapata spoke quietly. “Pull the bell rope so they know we’re here.”

  “Paulo,” said Pedro, “you do it.”

  “Not me,” Paulo whined. “They’re all lepers in there. I don’t want to have my fingers and toes fall off.”

  “If you two don’t do what I ordered,” Zapata said, “I will shoot your fingers and toes off.”

  Paulo walked reluctantly to the massive door. He glanced from side to side as if expecting a witch to come zooming at him on a broom. He turned to Zapata. “Nobody’s home. Let’s get going.”

  “Pull the damn rope,” Zapata demanded.

  Paulo grabbed the rope, but before he could pull it the door swung open and the specter of a nun appeared in a cloak and a winged hat.

  Paulo leapt back with a yelp.

  Pedro made the sign of the cross and shouted, “Jesus, save us!”

  “Shut up,” Zapata hissed.

  Pedro tried to regain his composure. “Sorry, Captain.”

  “Sister,” Zapata said, “I have reason to believe a fugitive is hiding here. May we come in?”

  “Who are you?” the nun asked.

  “Police. Special Police.”

  “No one is here, except for the dying and the humble servants of Saint Lazarus.”

  Zapata pointed at Bongo’s Rocket parked next to the fountain. “Do the humble servants of Saint Lazarus drive red convertibles?”

  The nun began to close the door.

  Zapata stepped forward and grabbed the nun by the arm and pushed her into the foyer. “You know who I’ve come for! Where is she?”

  Beneath the winged brim of her hat, the nun’s face contorted with pain from Zapata’s twisted grip. “Only the sickest are here.”

  “I’m looking for the Retinta, the blackest of the black. There’s only one like her, because she has white hair.”

  “We have many black ones here. They are all God’s children.”

  “Damn you!”

  Zapata twisted the nun’s arm violently. It broke with a loud crack as she cried out and fell to the floor.

  The nun’s cry echoed in the foyer. More nuns came running, the wings of their hats flapping.

  Zapata pulled his gun.

  The nuns stopped, cowering close together.

  Zapata grabbed one of them. “Come with me!”

  “Captain,” Pedro called, “what about us?”

  “Stay here. Don’t let anyone leave.”

  “Yes.” Pedro smiled. “We’ll keep these chickens in their coop.” Zapata ordered the nun, “Get moving. I want the white-haired Retinta.”

  The terrified nun nodded, then led Zapata down a long corridor and stopped before a door.

  “Please don’t hurt anyone,” the nun pleaded.

  “Unlock the door!”

  The nun glanced at the nail above the door. There was no key hanging there. “Mother Superior has the key.”

  “Where is she?”

  “You broke her arm.”

  “Go get the key. Don’t try anything funny. If you do, I’ll let my two men loose on your girls. You know what men like that do to virgins, don’t you?”

  The nun nodded, terrified, then hurried off and quickly returned with a key.

  Zapata shoved the key into the lock; it wouldn’t turn. “You gave me the wrong key! Damn you!” He tried the key again. “Wait a minute! It’s already unlocked!” He pushed the door and it swung open.

  Zapata stepped into the shadowy room with a bare cot against one wall. Through the crack of a barely open door he glimpsed a shrouded, bridelike figure in the garden outside. He pushed open the door and emerged into sunshine so bright that, even behind sunglasses, he was momentarily blinded. His eyes began to refocus as the shrouded figure turned, and a flash of light flared from its center with an explosion.

  The bullet struck Zapata with the same pain he had felt twenty years before, when an arrow flew from the sea and pierced his heart. He raised his hands to his heart, as if an arrow were really there. He grasped for the arrow’s shaft, trying to pull it out before it did fatal damage. Finally, he had it, he had the arrow of pain between his hands. He pulled it as hard as he could, but it refused to come out. He pulled harder. A torrent of blood spurted from his heart. In the red haze, Zapata whispered, “Nobody understood the perfume of your belly’s dark magnolia.”

  The arrow fell from Zapata’s hands. He was released. He pitched forward, falling at the feet of the shrouded figure.

  King Bongo hurried down a long corridor, turned a corner and stopped. Shouting and running toward him were Pedro and Paulo, their guns drawn.

  “You shot the Captain!”

  “You bastard!”

  Bongo reached instinctively to his shoulder holster, but it was empty. He had given the gun to his sister, before she crossed over to the other side.

  Pedro aimed his gun at Bongo. From behind Pedro, a blast sounded and a magnum force bullet slammed his head and blew out through his face, scattering blood and bone.

  Paulo turned to see where the blast came from. Before he could fire at the assailant, four bullets thudded into his chest, spinning him around in a headlong crash.

  Behind the two dead men lying on the floor stood the towering figure of Fido, his gun still aimed.

  “Where’s Zapata?” he demanded.

  “Dead.”

  Fido looked down at the blood pooling around Pedro and Paulo on the floor, then grinned at Bongo. “I told you I owed you. It was me who has been following you all along, sticking right to your shadow.”
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br />   “Thanks.”

  “Like you said, we help each other, that’s the Cuban way. Where’s your sister?”

  “Gone. I could no longer hold on to her.”

  Fido nodded sympathetically. “The rising tide of change has taken her.”

  “The tide has flooded everything.”

  “Our whole country.”

  “We’d better get out of here. The police, and the army, will be looking for us.”

  “Don’t worry. The nuns won’t say a word. I’ll take the three stiffs to the Pineapple Field.”

  “They’ll make a good meal for the devil dogs.”

  “Top-quality government meat,” Fido laughed.

  “So long, pal.” Bongo walked away down the corridor.

  Fido shouted after him, “No matter how much the tide changes, the country will always need you! You’ve got the rhythm! You’re the King of the Bongo! Without music, we die!”

  Bongo stepped through the convent’s doorway into sunshine. Birds chirped in the palms, water gurgled from the faceless angels into the fountain. The red Rocket gleamed in the light. He felt he could aim the Rocket at a new universe. Life had changed forever. Anything was possible.

  A yellow Packard Victoria roared up the drive and stopped in front of Bongo. The front window rolled down. Ming leaned his face out.

  “Hey, headless wonder!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “King Kwan, that’s been you all this time, a headless swordsman swinging away.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Hop in, Mr. Wu will tell you.”

  Bongo opened the Victoria’s back door and climbed into an interior of supple leather and polished wood.

  Mr. Wu reclined in the corner on embroidered cushions. He was buttoned up tight in a silk tunic, a skullcap on his head, his ivory cigarette holder between his lips. He took a deep pull on the cigarette, exhaling a cloud of blue smoke.

  Bongo closed the door. “How come you always know when to show up?”

  “I told you, we Chinese know everyone’s laundry.”

  “So you knew where my sister was the whole time?”

  “The nuns did her laundry, not me.”

  Bongo heard a laugh, he looked up. Ming’s face was reflected in the rearview mirror above the front seat.

  “I told you,” Ming laughed again, “Johnnie Ray’s ‘Soliloquy of a Fool,’ that’s the one. The guy beats himself up over what a dope he is about love. Pukes his heart out. A real tearjerker.”