Liveforever

by Andrés Caicedo

  The first thing you feel is that you’re not on the outside, that in trying to share it, true joy arrives; oh, and joy should never, ever be conveyed with words, but only with hugs, because with booze you become tongue-tied and you think to yourself, ‘I just need to concentrate,’ so you close your eyes to concentrate, and as soon as you close your eyes, your soul escapes. And what do you do then? Carry on, carry on drinking – let the whole world join us until we’re all plastered – with that aimless, directionless look as though we’re under the sea with our eyes open. And alcohol, now that was good for my hair – it may have made it a little lank, but at least it wasn’t tangled – and my skin … well, it may have been a little greasy the morning after, but it wasn’t the horrible greasiness and the terrible pallor you get with cocaine, just a watery film easily washed away with Luna soap to leave no dark circles, nothing but glowing skin, although the sockets seem to shrivel and the poor eyes start bulging as though someone’s pulling your hair, your ponytail, the whole circle of skin on your face, everything except the eyes, which stay, as though pleading for an explanation, for mercy. If it were possible to rip off someone’s scalp and all the skin on their face, my wild eyes would still be here pleading with the world for answers. The agonizing morning-after feeling, the migraines, the thirst, never bothered me: I learned to do headstands, I’d stand on my head for a couple of minutes and the headaches would vanish; and I never confused the heavy, burning feeling in my stomach with feeling sick; as far as I was concerned it was a healthy sign that I needed another drink. I prefer clear spirits: aguardiente, gin, vodka. Of the dark spirits, brandy is the only one I can stomach, rum is fatal. For a bottle of brandy, I gave my whole life – just imagine the lucky soul who got that – I kick and I quiver like a broody hen and the guy lets me go, convinced that I’m shattered. ‘Two or three of those,’ they tell me, ‘and it’ll leave you zonked.’ ‘You’re right,’ I tell them, but I’m talking to myself, trying to work out how many of them I’ve got inside me, how many bottles they’d fill; I could slap a label on it and sell it as essence of man transformed into nothing. I eat a big lunch and in the afternoon, as always, I sit and stare at mountains I’ll never have the strength to climb.

  All I hear is a voice inside me: ‘You’re having a blast, you should never doubt that,’ and when night comes I don’t miss a single drop; night fills me with such confidence that I flash murderous looks at anyone who leaves early.

  Me and the volleyball players are the last to leave. I say goodbye to our hostess, and ever since she’s been sending me letters, little messages awkwardly trying to explain how wonderful it was to have me at her rumba, how when she was on the bus today and saw me walking down the street, my step light, my head held high, she thought, ‘I’d rather see her walking along the banks of the River against the current.’ I never see her, not that she wants to see me either. I know that if we meet, the poor thing will just blush and nothing will come of it. In her last note she asked me to forgive her if one day I see her wearing the dress I’m wearing now, because she tells me she copies everything I do.

  That night I confessed to her that I’d been a magnificent but solitary dancer until the revelation that was her wild fiesta, I told her she was magnificent, with that pale complexion I like so late at night, her perfect serenity, the way she preferred to watch rather than dance. If you ever run into her, her name’s Manuela. Sambumbia!

  Daybreak was implacable, the advancing morning as stealthy as Indians. ‘Party-girl pelada, for you there’s more,’ the volleyball players said, as though this was a present, a gift in good faith when actually it was a promise I’d wrung from them with all my many charms. The rumba, the rumba is calling me, dance it, dance it like me.

  They had an apartment further up the hill, and there the music would carry on, there I intended to do the deed with them, but first I needed to revisit my past. ‘Follow me,’ I ordered. ‘We’re crossing the street.’

  The house, the gate, the front door were gaping wide and inside everyone was sprawled on the floor, a scratched record endlessly repeating a single line over and over, and my new friends said, ‘We can’t understand a fucking thing.’ Leopoldo was the only one in any sort of shape, wrapped around his sad guitar, his dry, dishevelled hair plastered to his forehead.

  I swelled with life and my eyes grew wide as I remembered how I’d totally understood the Spanish lyrics I’d just heard, the culture of my land where deep inside a sun is born, and I screamed at the top of my voice, ‘Down with Yankee cultural imperialism!’ and got the fuck out of there, with not a second to lose, dragging my new friends with me. Instead of the simple satisfaction of seeing everyone wake with a start, I had two:

  the satisfaction of picturing them waking and finding no one there – which was better than the simple pleasure of just seeing it for real;

  the satisfaction of seeing the expressions on the faces of the volleyball players who, once we got outside, asked no questions; they just kept shouting slogans in a daze of rage and stupefaction.

  I became a river of insistent thoughts, every one of them happy, I scaled the hill with them. A block further on I felt hunger pangs, and they said, ‘It’ll be quicker if we cut through the empty plots.’ I don’t know whether I believed them but it didn’t matter, the rumba calls to me and guaguancó has carried off thousands. We headed across the waste ground, I cut myself on the spiky grass, I had to lift my feet high to get anywhere and I was thinking about this, a little angrily, when I saw them stop and wait for me. I thought, ‘Do they want to devour me here?’ and just then, from one of the houses nearby, came the smell of breakfast, fried eggs and bacon. This gave substance to their desire, to devour me whole; it filled me with an even greater urgency, and one by one I put my arms around them, one by one I tenderly called each of them papito, unbuttoned his flies and lay down on a patch of bare ground with an expression like a mental retard. It’s a pity José Hidalgo felt hardly any pain because he went last and by then I was wet. As he emptied his whole being into me, I stared at the houses ringing the sky and as I looked around I noticed a group of guys who’d spent the night up playing cards; they were leaning on a balcony wall, watching the whole thing and howling like demons.

  Anyhow, inside a sun is born and I don’t find my love. Let’s go back to my place and crank up the bembé. The volleyballers lived in a one-room flat with a bathroom and a kitchenette. We took four pépas a day to ward off sleep and partied for seven days solid.

  I learned everything there was to learn. Their record collection, which they’d bought as a collective, covered the whole period of pre-revolutionary Cuba, pachanga and charanga, the revolution, and then the rolling wave of salsa that calls and calls to me now, and I thought, ‘Hang on. Learn to control the call, make it reciprocal. Make it wait.’ No one knows who got here first, who was whiter or blacker than you, who first had the idea, the good sense to ditch the slowness and bring on the beat, to lose the drag and bring in the bounce to create hard, throbbing salsa, to protect us all with the handiwork of Babalú, I call on Babalú and he comes to me, Babalú walks with me.

  By the beginning of the fourth day, I was complaining of a stitch in my side; we’d got to the hardcore salsa phase – they were playing the records to me in the order they were first released – the era of King (Richie) Ray,24 who I’ve mentioned already, and Ray Barretto;25 they taught how me to breathe, how to shift my weight, listen carefully, shift the whole weight of the dance from one foot to the other for those with no faith and no refuge, and then the soft counterpoint of the piano solos, the noodling of Larry Harlow,26 the rocks of Ricardo Ray raining down as the river rises – Sambumbia! – and the boogaloo bursts its banks; then you have to hold tight because the salsa pounds hard and fast, lean on your partner’s shoulders, a wave of mystery, and steel yourself – no, I’m not giving you my str
ength, partner, excuse me while I try to find some balance to my breathing, and in the meantime I breathe your breath and won’t let you breathe – and the guys and me, we like the way I sweat; I sweat like a horse. Everything’s so alive, and now when I dance I never leave the dance floor; it takes incredible concentration, and these days I hate cumbia and paso dobles, and fuck Los Graduados.

  But the golden rule in life is that every rumba comes to an end, that’s the rhythm of Guarataro. And now my perfect apprenticeship was coming to an end. Whenever they fell asleep, I swore at them. Their reaction was harsh: Hidalgo got up and turned off the stereo and I was left with no music, alone and bereft, the space of a thousand tiny stars, like ants, against a white backdrop, and my body was so weak I needed someone to hold me up. But no one did and I collapsed in a heap on the floor.

  There I slowly turned and turned in this silence – let no one take anything from me, let them leave me; the floor was wide and I scuttled around on all fours, flopped around, and it took them a long time to realize someone would have to get up if only to give me an explanation, to take away my pain, man. I’m grateful to Marcos Pérez that he got up. He told me, ‘Pelada, we’ve got college tomorrow. It’s time for bed. Everyone’s completely beat.’

  ‘I’m not beat,’ I said, pushing him away and starting to leave. I couldn’t really judge the steps but I somehow made it out to the street, to the air; I don’t know what the fuck they were doing giving pointless explanations that did nothing to relieve my pain, which already seemed far away.

  By now, it was morning. There are people who claim the day is the perfect unit and the human body is the mechanism that proves this. Because the body can cope with working or studying for just over twelve hours, after that, it sleeps. My body was devised for a more perfect mechanism: I didn’t feel sleepy that morning, I felt like visiting people and, more importantly, I realized I now knew, knew by heart, what English music was and what Spanish music was – I had achieved what they call ‘informed political awareness’. I skipped through the streets of this area that was in fact Miraflores. In the first corner shop with a telephone, I bought a beer and phoned the Marxists.

  The Cricket answered with a sigh. ‘Just woken up?’ I said, and then, ‘Lazy bastard. The early bird catches the worm.’

  ‘Who’s this?’ he said.

  ‘Me, you idiot. I’ve just discovered mind-blowing salsa. We have to destroy Rock to stay alive.’

  I demanded he meet me that day but eventually we agreed to hook up the following Friday. Neither of us showed up. Me, because I was at a rumba. He – and it pains me to admit this – because those fucking theoreticians had decided to blank me.

  That Friday, I was invited to a rumba by my cousin Amanda Pinzón in the very heart of El Nortecito. I arrived immaculately dressed so no one could make any comments … I wore jeans, obviously, but all the other girls were wearing skirts. I arrived in fine spirits: the place was heaving, the lighting was amazing, though there were too many people talking. I sauntered in, hands in pockets, smiling and waving at all my old friends. I wandered over to them, all excited; they were the only ones who responded when I said, Hi, What’s up, What’s going on, What’s the score, What’s going down, my darling boys, and just seeing me they got all emotional, some reacted with tears, some with the same laugh they had two years ago, some with that serious directness of precocious, dead young men who were all washed up, as they say. And God, how they acted, they all seemed so different, all staring into the distance at some point far beyond the dance floor, the patio, the house, beyond the whole block; it was like they were flying around in circles all over the barrio in the middle of the night. And their thoughts tended towards other kinds of music, towards the wild drumming of the distance.

  ‘You look like you’ve crossed mountains,’ I told them, and they said, ‘Exactly. We crossed them and we came back. We went as far as the sea. It was weird being so far away and hearing the call of the city.’

  ‘An abortive escape,’ I said, but I thought, ‘Some day, carefully accompanied and triumphant, I will plunge into the dark heart of those enchanting mountains.’

  I was wrong, but just then the music started up. There was a band. Alirio and His Rhythm Boys27 started playing something terrible and that set off laughter and lurching steps converging on me from all directions, and from the hideous expressions on their faces I was convinced everyone was attacking me and it took me a minute to realize that they were dancing.

  And without a single exception they were shit. I thought to myself, ‘Go easy, if you’re going for “El Guarataro”,’ so I started off softly: ‘I once knew a brave mulatto, who died up there in Guarataro,’ but by now I wasn’t singing, I was screaming: ‘This fear that says to me: get sharp, they’re shooting at you, but Babalú is with me too and I’ve brought saoco,28 fear and dread. Obatala, Obatala who owns all heads!’29 and by that point things were getting really awkward. None of my friends wanted to join in – I don’t blame them, they had their own shit to deal with; but I kept going, kept screaming all this stuff – ‘If I don’t raise no objection, I can’t get no satisfaction’ – right in front of the musicians so no one could say Ricardo was prompting me; laughing confusion on the face of the trumpeter – ‘Monguito,30 where you at?’ – on the face of the guy playing electric guitar and the one with the fucking organ; it was the reactionary redneck sound. Just seeing these people dancing the waltz and the chicks all acting like they were wearing crinolines. Because it’s hard to die when you’re still alive, I forced the band to take more breaks and every time they shut up I’d yell, ‘The Abakuá, when they come from the cumbá, waiting for the signal,’31 until four little guys came over to me, ‘and the Enkame32 of Moruá,’ with some girl who wasn’t actually my cousin, though she was obviously posh, ‘saluting everything that is Abakuá,’ and physically dragged me out of the place, and I told them calmly, ‘Because the saints deliver me from everything,’ and as I was being frogmarched out, I looked over at my old friends, Bull, little Tico, the boys (who, over time, what with all the rumbas they had to go to, were edging closer and closer to the door so actually they were never even at the party), and they stretched their arms out towards me and I let them touch the dazzling strands of my hair and everyone knew they were on my side, that they loved me but wouldn’t leave with me, and it was at this point they finally realized that they could never come with me (no one was prepared to take the risk); none of them ever found a woman, none of them ever got married.

  I got out of there, I left; I was out on my ass but with such a glorious sadness (the news would certainly have reached my parents by now) and an overwhelming urge to rumba! I realized I’d been wasting my time retracing a path I’d already conquered just by crossing a single street. I felt lost, disillusioned with this north I trudged out of sheer boredom. My love for Adasa still burned in my heart. Feverishly, I headed towards the savage south, where people hear my song.

  Ever since, the north has been a polluted wasteland to me. I explored other territories. My papá kept up my monthly payments and I lived in hotels or garages or on the street with friends indeed in my hour of need. And I hung out at the Universidad del Valle, making like I was a student or just some passing pelada, with blue jeans and boots made for kicking or for jumping puddles, depending on how I felt. But it wasn’t easy getting along with people; nobody else seemed to live for music the way I did. And when they started trying to rope me into some movement to get the rector fired, I’d say something like, ‘Beat out the rhythm, ’cos I don’t plan on stopping,’ and I’d jump to my feet, become hateful and threatening: ‘Give me salsa, ’cos salsa gets me hopping.’ I just turned on my heel and hit the pavement.

  The volleyballers went crazy when they saw me, but as soon as I’d turned my back on them, they were all: ‘That chick? Total middle-class p
rig, forget her.’ Until I told them, ‘Yeah that’s cool, soon as you get politics you start giving people the brush off.’ And I stalked off, feeling sad and confused.

  I spent hours sitting on the little wall outside an old house under the venerable towering kapok trees, and thinking about how old the building was had me imagining better times in this world: watching the last of the king’s emissaries stopping here around five o’clock to be served a mug of chocolate, some cheese and fine tobacco before going on his way, heading down into a valley where the only houses built since the Indians had died of grief when the Thugs arrived were the mansion at Cañaveralejo that belonged to Doña Amalia Palacios and the Cañasgordas house. I stared at the ruins of the mansion and imagined myself living there: utterly free, a family of lunatics, a twelve-year-old girl losing her mind in the attempt to prove Lovecraft’s writings are based in fact; incest, a possessive mother struggling against the onslaught of the years; possible witchcraft, walled-up rooms, footsteps in the night, the wail of some imprisoned creature; but, oh, never were my fantasies more cruelly disappointed – the house was inhabited by an ordinary family, the Capurros, whose offspring had no vices other than a genuine interest in engineering. I saw them show up at precisely the time the king’s emissary was due to arrive, trailing a cloud of dusk, their coarse features anointed with engine oil. I sighed to myself, sighed for the dead. I wandered off whistling ‘Trumpet Man II’ and, laden with sorrows, I slowly crossed Avenida Quita, deliberately holding up traffic.