by Marcial Gala
It was two thousand pesos, the largest amount of money I’d seen in my life, so I hid a thousand five hundred under the mattress, put the rest away in my backpack, and the following morning left for school. “See you this afternoon,” I said to my mother, and gave her a kiss.
“Why are you being so affectionate?”
“No reason, mamá.”
GRINGO
“Now there’s a black president,” that’s what Billy Holden told me with an ear-to-ear smile, assuming I’d be so happy. He told me yesterday, when he brought my food. “Listen, one of our guys is the president of America.”
“How nice.” I nodded, although at heart, what did I care, he was not going to pardon me no matter how black he was. When they tell him what I did, he might even move up the execution, so it’s all the same to me.
Piggy, if he were here, would sure be happy. Piggy is still as gullible as ever. I’m not gullible anymore; a black president, so what, who cares?
BERTA
Arriving in a town you thought was really small and finding it to be big instead, full of cement-roof houses, guajiros on motorcycles flying by with smoke coming out of their exhaust pipes, and guajiras who think they are all that, looking first down their noses at your Chinese Mary Janes and then at their own Adidas shoes and thinking you’re worse off. Arriving at that town after four hours’ journey on a truck overflowing with people and with barely any windows, and asking, “Listen, do you by any chance know an Araceli?”
“No, I don’t know her,” some said to me.
“Araceli? Araceli what?” a woman, somewhat older, finally said to me as she walked around with a thermos, selling coffee.
“I don’t know her last name. I came from Cienfuegos looking for her.”
“So what does she sell?”
“As far as I know, nothing.”
“So, if you don’t know her last name, and she doesn’t sell anything, you’d better run home to Cienfuegos, and when you have more information, come back.”
“No, I can’t come back here; if I leave, I won’t return.”
“Well, you would know. Do you want some coffee?”
“No, I don’t drink coffee.”
“Drink it, it will do you good.”
“Thank you … The Araceli I’m talking about is the girlfriend or wife of an Aramís.”
“I know an Aramís.”
“What does he look like?”
“He’s very white, with black hair.”
“That must be him.”
“I do know that Aramís, and his father and his brothers … Are you with him?”
“No, ma’am, it’s something else.”
“Then he’s with your sister, because he sold a load of oxen and went to Cienfuegos under the pretext of buying a motorcycle and he never came back … If he didn’t go to the Yuma, he must be there with some mulata, because he always fell for the darker girls.”
“I came with a message of his that I have to give to that Araceli. Try to remember, please, there has to be some Araceli.”
“Araceli? Araceli?… The only Araceli I know is Ferreiro’s wife, and I don’t know what message you could give her on behalf of Aramís Ramírez … I mean, as far as I know, Ferreiro and Aramís have never gotten along.”
“So where can I find her?”
“Well, what’s the message?”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“So tell me.”
“He asked me not to tell anyone.”
“You’re pretty mysterious for being so young.”
“What can you do? We’re like that in Cienfuegos.”
“Cienfuegos is shit. Santa Clara is better.”
“Whatever you say. Where does that Araceli live?”
“Continue along this street and turn to the right, she’s at the second house … I think the door is painted blue.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Be careful, guys around here go crazy for mulatas … since there aren’t many.”
ARAMÍS
Nothing they say about death is enough, it consumes you by the second, when you least expect it, you’re already in it, you begin to realize it when everything becomes relative, removed from you, cold and distant, just like it sounds, cold and distant. I’m already dead, which is a way of saying that I’m already on the other side of the wall, with just one small opening to see life, and that window is you, Berta, my window; through it, I can see myself arriving in Cienfuegos in search of a motorcycle, I see the feverish face of the man who killed me, and I see the liquid that will kill him, entering his veins, and then I realize that revenge is useless, it’s nothing but an advance against the final payment, and I’m fine with having already left behind my body of a young man, all muscle, my face that was envied by men and loved by women, I’m happy to have gone, Berta, happy; nevertheless, nevertheless, is she there? Tell me if she’s there, Berta? And if she’s there, tell her I can’t forget her, that I try and that sadness over not having been worthy of her prevents me from rising, going up to whatever regions I’d most like. Tell her, Berta, tell her: Araceli, Aramís is here next to me, he’s dead, but it’s as if he were alive because he thinks of you with the same pain as always, and he’d like to say more to you, he’d like to tell you about the great beyond, about death, but that’s forbidden, it’s closed off behind that door with seven seals, and he’s forced into silence, but if it weren’t like that, he would speak. Tell her, Berta, tell her. How is she? She looks pretty.
Yes, she’s wearing white and some really beautiful sandals.
Tell her then, go to my father’s house, and beneath the plum tree beside the door, there’s a crate buried with twelve golden rings; tell her to give one to you and take the rest for herself, and then she can leave that idiot husband of hers, she’s too pretty for him; tell her, Berta, tell her.
She’s not going to believe me.
Tell her.
Fine.
“What did you say?” the blond girl asked.
“He says to go to his father’s house, and there beneath the plum tree…”
“Ask him who killed him.”
“He says that’s not important, that you should go to the plum tree…”
“Get out of my house,” the blond girl said and stood up. “Out.”
GRINGO
They’re going to kill me, just like it sounds, they’re going to inject me with some kind of mixture so that I go to sleep and never wake up; and sitting before me, behind glass, will be the families of the Americans I bumped off, they’ll be looking at me, watching how I die little by little: It’s showtime. They’re going to kill me, at least that’s what they think, but maybe I’ll turn into an insect or a small bird, I’ll turn into a zunzún, a bee hummingbird, and I’ll escape through the window before they inject the first fluid, which is the one that hurts, the one that puts you to sleep, at least that’s what my fat black guard says, who also says that if he had a face like mine, he never would have spent his time killing women, instead he would be happily enjoying life, but unfortunately, he was born with the face of a damn otter and had to spend his time doing this, taking care of death row prisoners, even though he used to play football before he hurt his knee. You would be good as a politician, as governor, I say to him, now that there’s a black president, maybe they’ll appoint you. But he says, nah, he says, politicians tell a lot of lies and I’m not up for that, all I want is to pay my taxes and for Teresa to love me. Teresa is his wife, a fat black woman with a kind face, who sometimes sends me pancakes and a piece of roast that looks like plastic. “If I’d met someone like Teresa when I was still in Cuba, things wouldn’t have become so twisted,” I say sometimes, fooling myself, but since I was fourteen years old, I’ve only known bad whores, hypocrites, and prisses like that Johannes, that she-devil.
ROGELIO
A temple, something that, in these times when everything is in decline, dares to rise up and say, I’m here despite it all, I’m here, look a
t me.
GUTS
I was going to end him. When I called him outside, it was to end him and let disgrace catch up with me, immerse myself in disgrace and being a born fuckup, but he didn’t come out, he didn’t grab a knife or do anything like that. I think he even pissed his pants. All he did was look at me from behind his wife’s back, and I yelled at him chicken, maricón, and everything else that went through my head.
GRINGO
I didn’t want to find out what it is that they inject into you, but that fool Billy Holden found out for me and even brought me a printout that describes, with that abundance of detail that Americans seem to love, the advantages of sodium pentothal over other chemical substances also used for lethal injection. Sodium pentothal, I whispered to myself several times, but it didn’t sound like anything to me, it wasn’t like saying a stabbing or a machete wound. That Holden spends his time bodybuilding. He must have the metabolism of a city rat, since he can eat a large bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken and be hungry again within two hours. With one of those buckets, you can feed a whole block in Cuba and have some left over for the next day. That big black guy is an eating machine and I tell him so.
“If you end up in prison, your ass is theirs,” I tell him, and he laughs because he has biceps that look more like a fat woman’s thighs and he thinks that makes him a tough guy. He’s wrong. Piggy was also strong and didn’t have any courage; he bragged, but at heart he was just a little bunny, so after the pigs left, I went to get him and said to him:
“Piggy, we’ve got to get the hell out of here. But they’re watching me and the trip by boat to the Yuma is at least ten thousand dollars a head. So you know the deal, go to La Mimbre and knock off a guajiro, but one who has money. Go, I’ll wait for you here.”
“I don’t have it in me to do that.”
“Oh, really? What in the fuck do you have it in you to do, Piggy, if I may ask?”
“The other thing, selling meat.”
“Well, look, you’re going to have to find it in you because we can’t go on, they’re already after us.”
“What kind of mess have you gotten me into?” Piggy looked at me with fearful eyes, then he told me he didn’t want to go to the Yuma, that his mother was old and who was going to take care of her, and besides, the cold made him break out in hives.
“You’re going to break out in hives when they execute you. The AKM rips huge holes in your chest, the size of a fist, and then they bury you in one of those checked shirts we all have so no one can see the big holes.”
“But I didn’t kill anyone,” Piggy insisted.
“The one who kills the cow is as guilty as the one who holds it down,” I said to him, and he shook his head again, and I thought, I’m going to bump off this filthy pig before he rats on me, I’m going to finish him off, and then I’m going to sell his meat to the same dumbasses in Punta Gorda who feed off guajiros.
“Piggy, I’ll be waiting for you at Tita’s house at ten in the morning, that’s where we’re going to see this through, so don’t fail me.”
“But what if I can’t find a guajiro?”
“Get one, tell him they’re selling a 1959 Chevy with a diesel engine.”
GUTS
I was going to end him. When I said, “Come out,” it was to end him, but something saved him, I thought at the time. Something saved me, I think now. I would be in jail right now with Nacho Fat-Lips and Gordo Gris, looking at each other’s faces, waiting to see who ended who first, and not here in Barcelona, eating out white girls I have to call usted, white girls with thighs, not skinny or long legged. I went on with life thanks to that degenerate disappointing me. This old lady’s an ex-con? This old hag is a kingpin? I thought, when I saw how scared he was of what a kid like me could do to him, me, only sixteen then. Now, here in Barcelona, the ruffians pass right by me and I don’t pay them any mind, although one day at the entrance to the metro, some asshole said to me in Catalan, “Down with blacks,” he yelled it in my face. I still remember his green hair and his leather jacket. There were three of them, but only the most brutish one spoke, the other two looked somewhat embarrassed. “This fucking Arab doesn’t understand when I speak a Christian language,” he told his friends when I didn’t respond, since he was going for the jugular. I was working as a bouncer at a club in the city and it wasn’t in my best interest to dirty my uniform, so I sighed and tried to let it go, but the one with the green hair called me Arab again and black monkey, he got close to me and breathed in my face, and that’s one thing I cannot stand; when someone comes for me, I’ll meet them there. I threw myself at all three of them. It was as if I’d gone back to Cienfuegos. I hit them hard and then I took my dick out and pissed on the green-haired one’s face, it meant shit to me if he was Catalan and we were in fucking Barcelona, if you come for me, I’m there. “These blacks should be deported,” a woman said behind me, but I’m a Spanish citizen, I’ve got my papers in order and I’m married to Jimena, who is Catalan, and my father-in-law is so cheap that you have to ask his permission to so much as eat an apple.
BERTA
If I didn’t go mad then, I can be assured that I won’t ever go mad, because when that girl with her martyr’s face announcing mylifeissohard asked me to leave her house, the dead man literally grabbed me by the arm and there is nothing worse than being touched by the dead. When an ectoplasm touches you with its cold fingers, you don’t feel it on your arm: you feel it in your very heart, you feel as if it has stopped beating and you’re frozen, just dangling there.
Tell her I’m here, Aramís pressed.
I already told her, I said.
Tell her again, tell her I miss her, tell her to believe you and not to worry, that her husband just went to Javier’s house and they just took out a bottle of rum and he’s going to be a while.
I repeated it all to the blond girl.
She asked me, “What brand is the rum?”
Havana Club, seven years, the dead man said.
“Havana Club, seven years,” I said.
She started crying because it was true, her husband only drank Havana Club. “Tell him to tell you who killed him, ask him.” She fell into a chair again, close to a print of the Sacred Heart of Jesus looking down on us sweetly.
Tell her that doesn’t matter, the dead man said, tell her that would only serve to worry her, and for me, time no longer exists and now I see a lethal injection entering my murderer’s veins and how he writhes around.
“Ask him how I’m going to die,” she said. “Ask him how long I have left of this martyrdom, how long I will have to put up with this animal.”
Tell her not to be afraid, he said, to go where I said and get the gold, and to give you one and then escape together.
Together with me? Why me?
It’s a manner of speaking, the dead man said, although I’d like for the two of you to stay together, Araceli likes poetry just like you do.
Yeah, but I have my own life, I have my mother, I’m from Cienfuegos.
And you live in a neighborhood where you’ll probably get killed and maybe even raped first.
GRINGO
I had a big cast-iron pot where I boiled the heads until they lost all traces of meat and skin. Then with a hammer, I cracked the skulls into pieces and asked my Padrino’s permission to put them in the Nganga. I also took a phalange from the fingers of each dead person and two bits from the ankles. I had a special use reserved for Piggy’s skull. Salvador Piggy was going to work for me. I was going to own his head, there’s nothing better than a cowardly dead man like him, a dead pendejo that tells you about everything in advance. So I sharpened my knife and waited for him, I was sure he would come alone, but to my surprise, he came with someone. A woman, a guajira.
“Look what I brought you, Gringo,” he said, euphoric, peering in with that passing-for-white black man’s face of his. “This young lady wants an air-conditioning unit, she brought the money and everything.”
I looked at her. She was pretty
young, but she was fat. In fact, she looked swollen, her face even looked like that of a diabetic.
Could she be a cop? I thought, because it didn’t even pass through my mind that Piggy would be capable of sweet-talking a girl and bringing her here, even a girl like this one, who screamed guajira with those bloodred boots that, in the light, looked like they were real leather.
“How’s the young lady doing?” I said, and held out my hand.
“So-so,” she said.
“Listen, don’t be shy,” Piggy said, “this is my buddy, talking to him is like talking to me.”
Then, with that naïve, obstinate way that Cuban women have, she closed the small distance between us and gave me a kiss on the cheek. Poor thing, I thought, if I didn’t need the money so much to get out of there, I’d have let her go, but I needed the dough, and Piggy, the other candidate in the running, didn’t have a dime in his pockets, so the perfect candidate to be a corpse was her, there was no way around it.
“Take a seat, don’t be shy; you, too, tarugo, you’re not going to get any taller just standing there. What’s your name, sweetheart?”
“Amarilis.”
“What a pretty name … I’m Ricardo Mora, at your service.”
“I know you from somewhere. Are you by any chance an artist?”
“This guy doesn’t even sing in the shower,” fucking Piggy butted in.
“No, my dear, I studied civil engineering and I work to be of service to pretty girls like you.”
“Engineer, how fancy.” She seemed to relax. She even uncrossed her legs.
“What do you do?”
“Oh, I’m a housewife. My husband grows tobacco, in Chambas.”
“Chambas, Ciego de Ávila,” Piggy said euphorically, and opened his eyes so wide they looked like they were going to pop out.