The Black Cathedral

by Marcial Gala

  “Do you know how much those bricks cost?” he yelled.

  “No, papá.”

  “So then be more careful.”

  “Yes, papá.”

  “It could happen to anyone,” I said.

  “When I want your opinion, I’ll ask for it,” old Stuart said to me, and got in my face, it was as if he were going to hit me there in front of everyone. He was like that, calm on the surface but with a barely contained rage ready to come out at any moment.

  GRINGO

  I wanted to bring her with me, even if I had to pay twice as much for the boat trip. I’ll get the money back, I thought, and sometimes I think of how different my life would have been if Johannes had said to me, I’m going with you, when I proposed it to her, maybe I wouldn’t be here waiting to meet my maker, maybe I would have blended in and become one of those guys who put little American flags on the hoods of their cars and grill on Sunday afternoons, and later there they are, all fat, beer in hand, arguing with the neighbors about the World Series. If I had taken Johannes with me, everything would have been different, I’m sure, I wouldn’t have gotten myself in a mess; maybe I would have done well, because to get ahead here, you don’t have to bump anyone off, what you need here above anything else is someone to love you, and, ah, someone you can love, which is even harder. If that afternoon, when she was coming back from her school weighed down with poster board and paintbrushes, Johannes had played along when I said to her, “Let’s go sit down in Martí Park, we have to talk,” and then once we were there and I asked if she wanted a beer, since I had so much to tell her, if at that moment she had said, Yes, bring me a beer, and if she had smiled at me, my life would be different now, I’m sure of it, but that Johannes said no to the beer, and later, no matter how much I talked to her, she kept refusing:

  “No, Ricardo, I’m not abandoning my future for you, or for anyone.”

  “What future do you have in this shitty country? Besides, I love you, do you know that? Because of you, I changed and now I’m someone else.”

  “I only like you as a friend, Ricardo, I’ve tried so many ways to make you understand. That’s how things are and they can’t be changed, I’m sorry.”

  That’s how these bitches are, women, they’re always sorry, they rip your heart out and then they’re sorry, simple as that. I don’t trust any of them anymore. I don’t even trust my mother, that’s the truth. The other day, a ghost appeared to me, it came from Cuba, to ask me why I had killed him when he was in the prime of his life.

  “That’s how it is, you go around doing as much damage as you can until it’s your turn for the coffin to drop, and you know, my time has come, I have just days left, so don’t worry, soon you’ll be happier; but when I’m dead, I don’t ever want to see you; if I see you there on the other side, I’m going to give you the kind of beating that everyone but you will enjoy.”

  That’s what I said to him, because you have to talk to them, to ghosts, forcefully, to put them in their place.

  I could have also brought Piggy, so he could have at least been my secretary, not left him all messed up like I did, thinking that Piggy wouldn’t adjust here, when in reality, the one who didn’t adjust was me. I would have brought him with me if, after all, I’d known that the trip would turn out to be free, I had my Makarov for a reason.

  Later, Johannes said to me, because they wait until the end to drop the last bomb, that’s how they are, women:

  “I’m never going to love you, Ricardo, because you’re a bad man, I know it, bad. You may fool my father, but you don’t fool me, you are a bad man.”

  “Can’t I have changed?”

  “I don’t think so.” She stood up. “Goodbye.”

  Then she looked directly into my eyes, very seriously, and offered me her hand. I wanted an abyss to open up and the earth to swallow me at that moment, but those things never happen, at least not that quickly, so I shook her hand and asked if I couldn’t hold on to the least hope, and why was she saying I was a bad guy when I was just fighting to get ahead like everyone else?

  “What you did to Ingrid was very bad.”

  “Ingrid who?”

  “You know very well who, that white chick who studies dance. You got her pregnant and didn’t go with her when she got an abortion, you can’t just do that to people.”

  That bullshit? I thought. Johannes was so naïve.

  BERTA

  “I don’t know anyone in Cabaiguán, I’m not even sure where it is,” I told the ghost, and he kept looking at me with his eyes full of tears, and I had to tell him not to worry, that I’d go to this Cabaiguán to see this Araceli and tell her what happened, but, please, stop appearing to me, my nerves were shot enough already.

  “Thank you, I know that if you come with me, I’ll be able to find the way,” he said, and started to become hazier and hazier until he was just a wound and some sad eyes, and thanks to the diazepam, I fell asleep.

  I had just turned fourteen, and I’d barely ever left Cienfuegos, much less alone, but the next day when school let out, I went to find out if there was a bus that went to the town of Cabaiguán. The bus terminal was dirty, full of poor people, old people selling everything from newspapers to electric razors, and travelers, and I was expecting at any moment to see the ghost and his rolled-back eyes, so I was hunched over like someone with a fever, and a woman trying to remove a piece of churro from the floor with a broom asked me, “Girl, what’s wrong with you?”

  “Nothing. What time does the bus for Cabaiguán leave?”

  “There has never been a bus from here to that place. But if you wait until tomorrow, you can take a truck that leaves at noon and leaves you right in Cabaiguán itself.”

  “So how much is it?”

  “I don’t know, but it can’t be much because the little truck is in quite a state.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  “You’re welcome. I have a daughter your age and I know what that’s like.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Nothing, you heard me.”

  “Okay.”

  I didn’t know what I preferred: continuing to see the dead man’s face or telling my mother out of nowhere that I needed to go to Cabaiguán and putting up with how much she would surely have to say about the trip. A speech that would surely begin with an emphatic no and the declaration that I was strange, really strange. What are you looking to do in Cabaiguán, you lost something there? she would say. To fulfill a promise to a dead man, I’d have to respond, and my mother would find it in her to send me back to the adolescents’ clinic, and everyone in the neighborhood would think I was even crazier than they already did. So I needed to travel without my mother knowing and come back as soon as possible. Later I would say I had slept over at one of so many aunts’, cousins’, or friends’ houses.

  “Sir, do you know if the truck that goes to Cabaiguán already came?” I asked an employee.

  “Yes, it came already,” the man said to me, looking at me like I owed him something.

  “How much does it cost?”

  “To Cabaiguán itself?”

  “Yes.”

  “Forty pesos.”

  It was all I had, and that was because I’d sold a Joaquín Sabina MP3 file to the only person in that whole place who liked him, Johannes Stuart.

  Well, Aramís, your bad luck, I thought, and went toward the Boulevard. I can’t do anything else. Stealing isn’t part of my plan. If you keep showing up, I’ll have to get used to it—like menstruation. My mom wasn’t home. That time, one in the afternoon, marks the high point of domino games and all kinds of noise, and I had no desire to go back to our alleyway to face the alcoholics who would undoubtedly harass me: Berta, you’re getting a great body there, man, thin girls with round asses are so pretty. If you cook as well as you walk, I’ll eat every last bit. So I stuck my backpack in a storage locker next to El Encanto, went into the store, and started to look at the clothes and shoes that, according to my mom, we woul
d someday buy ourselves, then I jumped to another store and then another, and when I got to La Mimbre, I saw a naked man sitting right at the entrance, people passed by his side completely untroubled, but I was frozen.

  He raised his head and smiled at me. “I thought you’d be in Cabaiguán,” he said.

  “I didn’t have enough money.”

  “Play number eight, but it has to be early, before the bookies close.”

  “How much should I play?”

  “Ah, I don’t know, that’s up to you.”

  GRINGO

  “Padrino, there’s someone who wants to meet you.”

  “Tell him to come in and you come in, too,” he said to me. “Don’t forget to pay your respects to the altar.”

  “Yes, Padrino.”

  “Can I pay my respects, too?” Prince asked.

  “Of course, pay your respects.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I know him from somewhere.”

  “Of course, Padrino, he’s the Stuarts’ youngest son.”

  “Oh, really? They say he’s a very good speaker.”

  “You have to hear him, Padrino, he sounds like a president.”

  “So what’s he doing here?”

  “He wants to have a talk with you.”

  “For?”

  “To learn, Padrino. He’s tired of his father’s nonsense, Jehovah this, Jehovah that, as if there was nothing else to do.”

  “Is that true, kid?”

  “Yes, sir, it’s true.”

  “Well, well. What about the cathedral? That’s quite a building your people are erecting, when it could be that, well, in the worst-case scenario, they wouldn’t even let you in, for being black, the Poder Popular people or the Ministry of Education could come along any minute and use it as a school, you’ll see. But you can tell you’re loaded, that you have ties abroad. I’m the same, I have godchildren in Sweden, Denmark, France, Canada, the U.S.; even in Japan, I have a godson, Koizumi, who, every year, brings me tea and ceramics, all those decorations, he’s brought them to me little by little … Am I boring you?”

  “No, sir, of course not.”

  “Then pay your respects to the altar and come, sit down; you, Gringo, over in that chair; the kid here, close to me, I want to take a good look at him. How handsome he is, and you can tell he’s intelligent. These are the kinds of relationships that are in your best interest, Gringo, not that Salvador whom they call Piggy, that one’s not worth a halfpenny. You have to find people who will add something, not take things away from you, my son, pay attention to what I’m saying.”

  “Yes, Padrino, but here, the young man came…”

  “Yes, I know what he came for, actually, I knew he would come.”

  PART TWO

  BERTA

  I should have played the whole forty pesos, but my mother says my biggest problem is indecision, and she’s absolutely right. I only played twenty pesos. I was about to place them with Chulo, the bookie who lives in la cuartería, but I was afraid he would cheat me, so I went to One-Armed Cacha’s house and knocked. The one who came to the door was her husband, an old guy who thinks he’s good-looking.

  “What’s this beautiful girl here for?”

  “To speak with Cacha.”

  “Cacha, it’s for you,” the guy shouted, and One-Armed Cacha showed up, dragging her flip-flops.

  “Come in and sit down, my child, you’re not going to get any taller just standing there. Did you think about what I said to you?”

  “Yes, Cacha, but I’m not interested.”

  “Okay, but you’re missing out … with that body you have and that innocent face, you’d have the yumas slobbering after you.”

  “Cacha, I came to bet on a number.”

  “Now you’re into gambling. That’s good, let’s see if you get ahead at all … It makes me sad to see what a hard time you and your mother are going through, just because you feel like it. I already told you what you have to do.”

  “Leave the girl alone, Cacha,” said the guy, who had sat down on one of the rocking chairs in the living room and was looking at me from there. “She must know what she’s doing. Right, sweetie?”

  “Cacha, I’d like to place twenty pesos on eight.”

  “Eight, the number of the insignificant dead? That number’s not going to come up, better to place it on twenty-four, it’s about to come up, I’m telling you, it has been coming close for days.”

  “No, Cacha, it has to be eight.”

  “Oh, really? Did you have a dream, perhaps? A revelation?”

  “It’s not for me, it’s a favor I’m doing.”

  “It’s for your mother, isn’t it? She’s probably drinking again, no one escapes her fate.”

  “It’s for Aramís.”

  “And who the fuck is that? Your boyfriend?”

  “A friend.”

  “Be careful about the friends you get mixed up with, he could be undercover and I could be getting into a mess.”

  “No, Cacha, he’s a kid from school who’s like a brother to me.”

  “Is he white?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, well, turns out she has a thing for whites. That’s what’s with you, that’s why you don’t want to take up with foreigners. But whites, my child, they, well, the ones here aren’t exactly clean.”

  “Whatever you say, Cacha, but I’m in a bit of a hurry … I have to go study.”

  “‘I have to go study.’ What’s this ‘I have to go study,’ that doesn’t get you anywhere. Give me the money.”

  GRINGO

  “Did you see how easy that was, without a whole lot of talk, without so much bullshit.”

  “It’s true, Ricardo.”

  “I told you that you’d love him, Padrino is the best.”

  PABLO ARGÜELLES LARA, the Padrino

  Gringo brought him to me, yes, but when I’d tossed the cowrie shells, Zarabanda Siete Rayos had already told me he was coming and that I should be careful, that I should watch him closely, that I shouldn’t let myself be taken in by appearances. Yes, he was a handsome kid. Yes, he had skin that was without a blemish, without a mark, as if he were brand-new. I didn’t say much to him, I didn’t talk to him about his future, nor did I say this or that, nor that I was going to toss cowrie shells for him, or anything, nor did I give him advice. Who am I to say anything to one who comes to learn but nonetheless looks at me as if he already knows everything, as if he were doing you the favor of visiting you so you would believe certain things and later put on a plaque SAMUEL PRINCE STUART WAS HERE ONE VERY HOT AFTERNOON?

  That kid’s no good, I thought when he left. Gringo isn’t, either, but he’s nothing compared to the other one, together they make a fearsome pair.

  GUTS

  I was looking for a way to make my name, so I went over to see Ordóñez, who had just gotten out of prison, and I started beating on his door. “Who the hell is it?” came a thick voice from inside. The door screeched when it opened, and Ordóñez’s wife stuck out first her head full of curlers, then her body, half-covered with a worn robe, and she looked at me with hate in her eyes.

  “What’s wrong with you?” she said.

  I looked her up and down because she was hot, and her cleavage and almost an entire thigh were on display. “Is Ordóñez in?”

  “Ordóñez, some kid is looking for you.”

  I thought, A kid, hell, you’ve got so much more than that in store. Start getting your body ready because you’re going to end up a widow and the only thing you know how to do is fuck.

  In addition to everything else, I’d had it in for Ordóñez for a while. He was involved in the death of my cousin Luis; he didn’t kill him, but he was drinking at the table when Luis was stabbed, everyone said so: Ordóñez is a good-for-nothing, but they were scared of him. I wasn’t scared of him, I was going to introduce him to his maker.

  “Come out,” I said to him when he peered out with his fat face. “Look for something with a sharp edge and co
me out.”

  “For?” he said, playing dumb.

  “You know.”

  “I don’t have to go anywhere.”

  “Ordóñez, what’s this goon’s problem with you?” his wife asked. “You just got out of the clink, don’t get yourself into trouble, Ordóñez, because this time I’m not going to bring you whatever you need in there. Ordóñez, pay him whatever you owe him. Ordóñez, look, if it’s a lot, just give him something to start.”

  “I don’t owe anyone anything.”

  “Yes, you do owe me,” I said. “Luis is dead.”

  “But I didn’t kill him.”

  “But you were there.”

  “So what does that have to do with anything? Listen, kid, please, get going, I just got out and I want to lay low, don’t fuck up my life.”

  “Yeah, Guts, please, go on with your life, muchachito,” she said. “Look, come in, have some orange juice to cool off, listen, I’ve known you my whole life.”

  “I don’t want some refreshment, I don’t want anything, what I want is for this sewer rat to get a knife and come with me.”

  BERTA

  The next day, Cacha came to see me. “Your number won,” she says, and gives me the money wrapped up in newspaper. “Buy yourself some clothes,” she says. I don’t tell her that it’s for going to Cabaiguán to fulfill a promise to a dead man; I thank her and ask her not to tell anyone, especially my mother, because she’ll start a fight and I’m not up for that.

  “Ay, child, who am I going to tell? You do whatever you want with your life, you offend me.”

  “I’m sorry, Cacha.”

  “Play another number. Take advantage of the streak, that won’t happen again.”

  “Thank you, but my mother will kill me if she finds out.”