Liveforever

by Andrés Caicedo

  I didn’t show up tired. I stood on the corner and the tough guys gave me respect. A shoeshine boy with a face on him like a worm, his skin rolled and rumpled over his stick-thin skeleton, offered to shine my boots for free and I accepted, and while he was polishing leather, I boogied to the beats blasting full volume from six different shops, so I had to fuse them, create a single throbbing pulse; that’s how music is, it has no use for bars or shuttered windows: still it trickles out. From Los Violines came the supplication ‘Arrepentida’, from Fujiyama, ‘Si la ven’, from the bakery opposite, ‘La canción del viajero’, from El Nuevo Día, the hard salsa of ‘Alafia cumayé’, and they say that in Natalí they were playing ‘La voz de la juventud’. But I’d have had to cross the street and walk another block to hear it; a lot of people headed there, a lot of people stayed, but standing here on the corner where I’m telling my story, some said that at the Picapiedra – the Rocksplitter – they were belting out ‘Here Comes Richie Ray’, don’t miss the big rumba about to go down there, so that’s the place I chose, I have three Marías inside me. I hugged the walls until I found the entrance, which a fat man was blocking with his short stubby legs; he stared at me, trying in vain to recognize me. As soon as I turned to him, glanced at him fleetingly, he lowered his legs and allowed me into the long, narrow stairwell; they were still at the first third of the song and I thought to myself, ‘I’ve arrived,’ and in my memory I fixed every square inch of the doorway that, from this night on, would lead me every night to this same music.

  At the bottom of the stairs there was a bend and then the bar, lined with real men; to the left was the dance floor, jala jala, where a woman with the longest legs and the skimpiest shorts was pounding out the beat on her thighs – I sing only for myself and for Yemaya; and everyone thought it was all kinds of weird that I sat at a table by myself – ‘Iqui con iqui’, bold as brass – and ordered a beer, and the customers warily approached my table, checking me out, and I’m playing the jala jala just for you, Puerto Rico is calling me. After the seventh beer I threw myself on to the dance floor and all the tension built by my presence was shattered, of course, saoco and bring on the beat; the guys gathered around me, and when the music stopped and I stood there, the only thing this one skinny guy who’d been staring at me could think to say was, ‘Pelada, how much you charge?’

  I stared back, turned on my heel and he followed me to my table; I sat down, looked at him again, picked up the glass of beer in front of me and said, ‘Three hundred and you pay for the room.’ That’s what I’m worth, top of the range. They all bitch, but they all come flocking just the same.

  We left. Like an explorer, he led me to a room with tiles on the walls. He undressed me slowly, parted my legs: I let him press his repulsive face against mine, for the dead; he tried to put it in me but the great maestro couldn’t work out how. I had to slide my hand down to slip it in me. He was talking about the sort of pictures they paint on buses when I suddenly used my insides and blew him up like a bellows. He must have felt a shard of ice, a creeping coldness, a swelling … he tried to pull his prick out but by now it had blown up like a melon. He completely exploded inside me, the shreds of his skin like lashes from a whip. That, to me, was living.

  I ran out of there screaming and caterwauling: ‘My john’s just snuffed it on me.’ Richie Ray just got up to get down, and that’s something everyone knows.

  That night, I wanted to sleep and sleep, so I went back to the hotel. I woke to a horrible, sweltering Sunday morning and went to visit my folks. I remember the whole scene in a sort of photographic blur, a gauze, they call it. Mamá opened the door to me and gave me a brief hug. They were both up and dressed. They invited me to stay for breakfast, and every plate I touched clanged loudly against the glass-topped table, but they had no problem, except when my papá choked and coughed and spewed café con leche all over my shirt. By now they were well used to me not being around and they didn’t miss me, although they’d have been pissed off if they knew what I got up to at night. They realized I’d just come to get some clothes. When I told them I’d seen a little apartment, they agreed to shell out for the rent without even asking me where it was.

  ‘You’re very young,’ they said. ‘You’ll learn.’

  Astounded, I told them I agreed.

  I went up to my room. The venetian blinds were closed and covered in dust. Out of sheer perversity, I opened them and looked down at the park dappled with droplets of dew, the sweat of the trees and the mountains, pockets of life. The mirror was missing.

  They suggested I stay for lunch and maybe even a siesta, but I didn’t want to: I couldn’t have survived a Sunday afternoon in that house.

  I left, knowing I had my whole life ahead of me. And I’m not done living it by a long shot.

  Though I don’t plan on moving from here, I like to imagine there are better places than this frenzy on the corner of Cuarta and Calle Quince, that it’s only out of pathological abulia that I don’t go looking, the fact that I’m no longer capable of moving in a horizontal direction, now that the rumba is pounding, because since I got here, I don’t walk anywhere any more, I’ve got the rumba twenty paces from here – even when I’m in bed I can hear it. I hear rumours that things are better, more modern on Avenida Octava, at the Séptimo Cielo and the Cabo E, but look at it this way: I’d have to walk four blocks down Calle Quince and along Octava, way past Calle Veinticinco, past the cemetery. No, I’m not moving any more. These days I’m a bit freaked out at the thought of constantly looking for new directions when in the end there’s only one beat. And it’s Richie’s rhythm, nothing else. They come to me, the papitos seek me out because they know I’m down here on Calle Quince, and I get them going with my little mounds and my sweet luscious locks, I pinch them sweetly, pretend they hurt me; I’m better than they are and if they so desire, I guide them in their first steps through the outer limits of this jungle.

  How does a former student at Belalcázar Secondary School wind up working as a whore? I get other visits that are less pleasant. Recently, it was the Cricket, the Marxist, who came to get smashed, to drown his heartbreak, prattling on about the thousand and one failings of the bourgeoisie (the pelada he’s in love with lives in the heart of El Nortecito), and I just nodded at everything he said and suggested – only half joking – going and doing some damage, and he was patting me on the back until the silence came and he realized where he was, who he was with, how it would look, and made a first attempt to stand up. No cigar. Sitting there, powerless, he told me he had to go to the toilet. I took him by the elbow and helped him to his feet. He stood there with duck eyes, swaying in the middle of the empty dance floor. When they’re drunk, it’s like men have their eyes closed: for as long as you don’t move them, they resist; shake them up a little and suddenly they’re more composed. I’m the opposite: get a drink or two inside me and I’m head over heels and pounding to a rumba. The Cricket moved his legs apart to get a better foothold on terrain that offered none, then he looked round to find the toilets, and I pointed them out: whether what caused him to bloat was the slow, precise movement of my lovely arm, the actual distance to the toilets indicated by my arm, or whether my gesture, my outstretched arm, made the distance seem greater, I don’t know. Whatever it was, he gave up on the idea, sad is his song. He trekked back the short distance to tell me he was leaving. Oh, how terrible it must be for a man to suddenly discover he’s in the midst of such debauchery, to realize that he’s failing in his duty but incapable of going to find it because the moment he moves he looks pathetic. I walked him to the door, as was my duty, but didn’t help him down the stairs, I didn’t even stay to watch. If he’d rolled down the stairs like a sack of potatoes, I wouldn’t have stayed to watch.

  It was one evening, naturally, staring out at the six layers of mountains, that I decided that it was impossible
, that to leave this place would be to cause myself intolerable pain because of the distance, even assuming that having left I’d come back: the road back to the place where you belong is never-ending. I’ve no reason to live anywhere but here where I have my heart, my rumba, the land I love. The papitos see me, although they don’t really get me, my sophisticated air, the way I look straight ahead, but they never ask questions: they know that I appeared one evening and some night I’ll leave them telling each other stories about the pelada who was like a princess but crazy, absolutely crazy about music.

  My dreams these days are weightless. I’ve come home having listened to pure pleasure, come home still wide awake, simply because it’s four in the morning, the hour when, by law, everyone has to be in bed. I go back to my room where I have a vision of Saint Barbara and another of Janis Joplin clinging to a bottle of booze, because in me a sun is born and I don’t find my love. I go to bed reciting lyrics but I don’t sleep, I don’t dream; in me I feel a hammering that beats out a rhythm, I struggle to recite the lyrics and I cover my ears and grit my teeth so as not to hear them, not to speak them, to make it clear that I’m in pain, and all the while in my head are recent flickering images of me agreeing to dance, all smiles, awkward, drinking in the newest, the best rumba. I spend the mornings buying fabric for dresses, looking at myself in the mirror, making plans to head south and spend the day cheering up the kids. But I don’t go there any more, I don’t cross the River any more. I stay on my street, the one that brings me music. More often than not, the guys that come here are from the north, because up there everything’s gone silent, so they come here for a bit of excitement, they come for my conversation.

  Hey you, make your childhood more intense by loading up on adult experiences. Couple corruption to the freshness of your youth. Rappel down the possibilities of precocity. You’ll pay the price: by nineteen all you’ll be left with are tired eyes, emotions spent, strength sapped. By then, a gentle, pre-planned death will seem welcome. Get in ahead of death, make a date with it. No one loves an ageing teenager. You alone know you’ve confused the squandered years and the thoughtful years in a furious whirlwind of activity. Living simultaneously forwards and in reverse.

  When you finally explode in the midst of your friends, what will you do? Will you fall asleep, slack-jawed, right in front of the ones who’ve always admired your energy? Will you say goodbye, stumbling off, leaving people to bitch about you behind your back? Will you explode and splatter everyone around? Why seek out friendship in moments of humiliation? Cultivate your addiction to solitary vices.

  It was strange feeling that this was going to become an everyday occurrence, this walking past a record shop and stopping, dumbfounded, whenever I hear the beat of drums, people saying, ‘Can I help you?’ and me, open-mouthed, astonished: ‘No, I’m fine, thanks.’ At first, I even thought about setting up a record shop. I would have been acclaimed, the pelada with all the salsa back at her place. But what place? The rented room I live in with a toilet and a mirror? I never was much good at collecting things anyway, I lack the self-restraint, I’d end up lending out all the vinyl, and besides, I thought, ‘If I collect records, I’ll end up listening to them myself. I’ll turn into a melancholy shadow, and from there it’s only a short step to tango.’ But I would have been respected all the more, people with records are always respected. Not that people disrespect me, because I whisper in their ears the lyrics of every bolero, good and bad, because I explain even the stuff that can’t be understood, the slightest turn, the faintest call that leads to salsa dura.

  I cash my parents’ cheque every Friday. They’ve redoubled their generosity. And every Friday I rob some guy: one of those fat guys who venture into these streets. And every guy who’s heard of me I leave with his own little wound, so the next day they can tell everyone at school what they survived. Since I don’t want the other girls wondering how I come up with all the cash, given what I do, I don’t go strutting around all cuchí cuchá: the girls all know I love them.

  The birds sing and in the trees (far from here, on the other side of the River), I imagine them swaying in the twilight, then I imagine every leaf making the raw sound of trumpets that is the call of the jungle that caught me in its spell. I know I’m a pioneer, a lone explorer, and that some day, in spite of myself, I’ll come up with the theory that books lie, movies exhaust, let’s burn them all and leave nothing but music. If I head that way, it’s because that’s the way we’re headed. We’re living the most important moment in the history of humanity, and this is the first time so much has been asked of its children. Looking into their faces, into the gaping mouths or the rings around their eyes – in my humble opinion, these kids, mis amigos, have succeeded. We are the plaintive note whimpered by the violin. They laughed at boogaloo, and just look at them now.

  Hey you, don’t baulk at a challenge. And don’t become part of any clique. Never let them label you or pigeonhole you.

  Let no one know your name, let no one give you shelter. 77

  Ignore the trappings of fame. Leave something of yourself behind and die in peace, trusting a few close friends. Let no one turn you into a grown-up, a respectable man. Never stop being a child, even when you’ve got eyes in the back of your head and your teeth are starting to fall out. Your parents gave birth to you. Let them support you forever, and fob them off with empty promises. Who gives a fuck? Never save for the future. Never let yourself become someone serious. Make heedlessness and fickleness your rules of conduct. Refuse all truces, make your home amid ruins, excess and trembling.

  The world is yours. You are entitled to everything: charge the earth for it.

  Never allow yourself to feel satisfied.

  Learn never to lose your vision, never to succumb to the short-sightedness of those who live in cities. Arm yourself with dreams so that you never lose your vision.

  Forget that some day you might ever attain what people call ‘normal sexuality’, and never hope that love will bring you peace. Sex is an act of the shadows and falling in love a union of torments. Never expect that you will one day come to understand the opposite sex. There is nothing more different or less inclined to reconciliation. Listen: practise fear, rape, struggle, violence, perversion and the anal route if you believe that satisfaction depends on tightness and a dominant position. If you prefer to withdraw from all sexual congress, so much the better.

  For the hatred instilled in you by the censor, there is no better cure than murder.

  For shyness: self-destruction.

  The rhythms of solitude are best acquired in cinemas; learn to shun cinemas.

  Never succumb to remorse or to the pettiness of social climbing. Better to fall, to become an outcast; to end a long, undistinguished career in dreary dissolution.

  To harden your skull, practise beating it against brick walls.

  There is no moment more intense, more agonizing than a man waking at dawn. Complicate and draw out this moment, waste away within it. You will slowly die and, bellowing, learn to face each new day.

  It’s sensible to listen to music before breakfast.

  Listen: conceal oblivion. Learn to stoically contemplate each beginning. If you are tempted by evil, give in: you’ll end up spinning on the same axis.

  Eat everything that’s harmful to the liver – green mango, mushrooms and salt with everything – and learn to wake up with the worms. Become a ceiba tree, providing food for parasites.

  Hey you: never worry. Die before your parents to spare them the ghastly sight of your old age. And look for me wherever all is grey and no one suffers. We are legion. Tell no one this.

  I bet no one can hear how much the screech of every heel, the smash on head of every bottle, the plea of every collapsing drunk, the beat of every bembé, how everything, everything calls to me, just as everything belongs to me and the r
umba calls me. If I’d never known this wild and savage sound, I’d be a sordid soul lost in the jungle. But now they call to me, they howl for me. They say people come from distant cities to meet me and squander garbage. Photos of me are published in the scandal sheets and I laugh, imagining the scandalized faces the pigs would make; were it not for the fact that I no longer have the strength, I’d join them, go out and chant slogans, smash windows, but what use are fantasies when those parts of the city are so remote now, they’re not part of my stamping ground any more? I suppose the Marxists must have seen the photos and thought, ‘Just look how low the bourgeoisie can sink.’

  It’s so sleazy but it’s so good.78 I don’t mind serving as a scapegoat, I am beyond all judgement and in every photo I look divine, I look fabulous. Strength, I have. I have given myself a name –

  LIVEFOREVER79

  – propitious because to walk trustingly hand in hand with the night does not mean he shelters you, the coachman who comes and stops, the black coachman with the brightly coloured saddle.80 I will carry on, because the rumba is not what it was yesterday, no one can name it – savour it? – because the rumba is not what it was yesterday, no one can tame it. You: find the way then lose your way, rumba on till you’re rumba’d out.81 Toss it all into the cauldron where you’ll brew the salsa of your confusion. Now I’m going, leaving a trickle of ink on this manuscript. There’s a fire at number 23.82

  María del Carmen Huerta (A.C.83)