The Cigar Roller

by Pablo Medina

  Julia has come in from the garden with a plate of red and green tomatoes, which she places on the kitchen table. She picks a red one and slices it with the large knife she brought from Cuba. The blade, worn from so much sharpening, cuts through the tomato as if it were butter. Julia arranges the slices on a plate and dresses them with salt and olive oil. She places the plate and a loaf of Cuban bread between her and Amadeo. Amadeo tears the loaf in two and hands half to Julia. He splits the other open with his thumbs and makes a sandwich with several tomato slices. As he eats he watches Julia do the same thing. She eats heartily but gracefully and in between bites says that the tomatoes are good this year. At one point red juice dribbles out of the side of her mouth, which she wipes with her apron. Her fingers are long and delicate but she holds the bread firmly and a few crumbs drop on the tablecloth. She picks them up by pressing down on them with her index finger, which she then takes to her mouth and licks. Amadeo likes to watch her eat in these moments when they are by themselves, wanting them to stretch out the length of the afternoon but they never do. One of the children comes into the kitchen wanting something from their mother or a neighbor stops by with a bit of gossip, or one of the cigar workers appears unexpectedly with news about a union matter. He gets up from the table and lights a cigar, the smoke clouding his face, and makes a comment that will return the broken world to the space between them—you planted too much calabaza this year, you are gaining too much weight. It is his father in him, gulping and spewing smoke like a belching dragon. If I am disappointed, let the world be disappointed with me.

  Whenever he leaves the house on one of his walks it is Havana, not Tampa, he wants around him. At dusk, muted in a smoky light, he goes back to it, remembering a balcony on Reina Street where a girl with long brown hair eats guava paste and looks down the street at nothing in particular; or O’Reilly where an old man in rags is praising God and cursing Spaniards; or the Paseo del Prado where a band is playing danzas in the new style. It is the memory of his father whipping him that enters his heart like a burning needle and stays there turning end over end. He shuts that door, then Havana turns back into Tampa and he is walking down Séptima. He should return, find a woman there who will understand him like Julia did before Albertico died and their lives went to hell; then he hears the drip of the bathroom faucet and realizes where he is. Drip, drip into the sink all night and he trying to sleep, erase the burning needle. Fear has driven him every day of his life. He shuts that door. Drunk and asleep on a whore’s bed, shut that. Waking on a park bench at dawn and showing up at the factory where the foreman laughs at him and sends him home. Standing before Julia, bleary-eyed and odorous, asking her forgiveness. She serves him a plate of vaca frita and slices of avocado, which he eats alone. Albertico’s limp arm hanging down. Shut that, shut that. He has been living his life over and over, every step, every dark corner, the interstices, the voids. Julia tells him she is going back to the island to live the rest of her life in peace. There is no anger in her voice, there is no love. Bang, he shoots his father again. Bang, in the back of the head. He hears of Julia’s death and the needle goes deeper. Everything happens in the present, all around him simultaneously. Who says he cannot feel? What do the doctors know?

  Each drop of the faucet punctuates his condition, each is a measure of his helplessness. Once he was a man who worked, who smoked, who fixed leaks. Once he thought of death as a silent far-off place that had nothing to do with him. Now death is the sound of the faucet dripping (Chano would enjoy that one), a man hanging, his wife screaming cabrñn, hijo de puta. A fourteen-year-old is a woman, he says to Julia. A fourteen-year-old doesn’t play with dolls. A man has certain needs. That I can’t satisfy? That you can’t satisfy. How could I marry you, she says, her face twisted with regret. You did. Mal rayo te parta, she says. Amadeo pushes her out of the way and goes outside to smoke. Evil lightning has broken him. The curse came true even if it took a long time. Shut that door. He hears one slow drip followed by two quick ones and then a ping in his chest. Just as he is getting used to the room, the quiet when Nurse is not present, the sun blinking through the window, the pastels of the sea outside so blue, so endocrine, and the radio playing music in the hall, Nurse II singing along, just as he has, at long last, put out the fire of his past and accepted this room as his world, which he will live in forever until forever ends, comes the drip, drip drip, drip, drip drip, a beat no one can dance to unless he’s limp and holding a cane. Each drip is the name of someone he knew: Alfibio, Sagrada, Heriberto, Manolo, Israel, Saelo, Bermudo, Anastasio, Nelia, Eduviges, Elvina, Seferino, Tania, Samara, Longino, Cresencio, Aurelio, Carmela, Domingo, Alejandro, Pancracia, Filio, Darminia, Dolores, Esencia, Apolonio, Mateo, Germán, Sonora, Martirio. All the remembering is keeping him awake when he should be learning the art of forgetting. He remembers the storm that broke the cathedral’s belfry. He remembers a dog licking its broken leg, Ana’s sweet untouched face, his mother’s breath, Julia’s purple nipples, a man beating his horse with a two-by-four, a rumbero levitating over his drums, the face of a man who fell dead in a cockfight, he remembers the imaginary beach of his lack of ambition, a fish jumping out of the water into an imaginary sky, the waves slinking in, bringing messages from another imaginary beach where the moon is licking his hand and a lone sentinel stands guard. Amadeo remembers food, numbers, addresses, sighs, angers, the fierce green of his country, a man there in the distance riding a sorrel mare. He confuses places and names, he mixes up times and dates. In one memory he kills his son; in another he is bouncing him on his knee. He remembers Tavito his brother: toy enamorao como la hoja el caimito. He is laughing, he is crying, he has just bought Julia a diamond ring. He remembers songs and small white waves breaking on a black beach, Amalia’s belly, Alina’s hair, black clouds over cane fields, his father’s red face. Albertico, Albertico, shut that door.

  An eternity he listens to all that he’d like to forget until Nurse II notices the leak and sends in a plumber. He is ruddy and bulbous with whiskers growing out of his nose. He is speaking to himself in the bathroom and complains about the plumbing in Santa Gertrudis, heaping curses and condemnations so vile that even Amadeo holds his breath. Amadeo listens with interest: he hears the banging and clanging of the tools on the metal pipes, the plumber’s deep breathing, the scuff of his work boots on the tile floor. After an hour the plumber comes back out. He pulls a red handkerchief out of his back pocket to wipe his face. The faucet stems were totally stripped. I replaced both and put on new washers. You have a good faucet there for many years, he says to Amadeo. The man is standing at the foot of the bed expecting a response. All Amadeo can do is stare back. Cat swallow your tongue? the plumber says. Cocksucker can’t talk. Can you move? Holy fucking shit. Can you hear? You’re in sad shape, my friend, mi amigo. The men are staring at each other in silence. The plumber is frozen in space holding the handkerchief next to his face. Amadeo blinks. You can hear, says the plumber. Amadeo blinks yes again. Amadeo would like the plumber to stay, blink. Amadeo would like him to tell Nurse II, blink. His mind works, his thoughts work, blink, blink. Tell about the leak, tell me how you fixed it, blink, blink. I was walking down the street, blink, and all of a sudden, blink. The people here don’t know anything, blink. They think I’m a vegetable, blink, blink, blink, blink. The plumber finishes wiping his neck and face and puts the handkerchief away. Amadeo is blinking fiercely, trying to make a language the plumber will understand. The plumber is looking at him strangely, he stammers a phrase Amadeo cannot make out, then he composes himself. Well, he says, I fixed your faucet, friend, and leaves. Amadeo’s eyes are burning. He has communicated with someone for the first time in almost five years but he has left the room and will, most likely, never return. He is not disappointed and he is not overwhelmed with desperation. Rather, he feels buoyant, a physical lightness that makes him close his eyes and rest, sunlight warming the room, the conversation between Nurse II and the plumber in the hall barely audible over the happy purr of his bo
dy.

  * * *

  Two, three times a year the volunteer ladies bring flowers to him that the local florist donates to Santa Gertrudis. He can smell them from where he lies, especially the ones like him that are close to death, and they trigger the memories of the garden, and of Julia in it, like a flower herself out of whom emanates the scent of paradise gained. But paradise is not, Amadeo knows, here in this room. This is hell because he cannot leave it, this is hell because it is the smell of death that reaches his nostrils—the flowers, himself. No use thinking there might be another chance (an exception made just for him) hidden away in the files of the laws of the physical universe. Santa Gertrudis teaches you otherwise, no delusions allowed. If he is alive it is only because his sons are paying for him to be fed, washed, and cured when he needs curing. It is their money he should be cursing, money that keeps him from the total forgetfulness death will bring. This is a realization that should cause him great consternation, but it does not. A garden has insects, a forest has beasts, a sky has birds, Santa Gertrudis has patients, nurses, Amadeo, blink blink, blink blink blink.

  The cigar smoke is filling Amadeo’s mouth. He holds it there, shaping it with his mouth, chewing on it to get the full taste before letting it float out. It is a Sunday morning and there is nowhere he needs to be. Julia has cut several of the yellow roses which she will trim and place in a vase in the living room. She is now digging a trench along the far wall behind the outhouse and handles the pickax with the strength and confidence of a man, Amadeo thinks, then corrects himself. There is nothing masculine about her. He holds the cigar in front of him and studies it. The ash is a light gray and it burns smoothly around. The taste is even and the smoke doesn’t bite. The vein of the wrapper leaf curls to the left, as it should. He knows not to roll the wrapper too tightly for that will make the cigar not draw right. The smoke is moist but doesn’t have the moldy taste of tobacco that has lain too long in the ship’s hold. In short, he is smoking as perfect a cigar as can be made in an imperfect world. Last night she told him she was thinking of planting a grapevine along the far fence. You’ve never planted grapes before in your life, he said. Time to start, she said. They won’t grow in this climate, he said. How do you know, she said. Too hot, the vine won’t yield fruit. Then we’ll have an arbor we can sit under. She planted the vine and it grew and gave fruit, small bitter grapes not even the birds ate, but it gave good shade and made the backyard usable during the hottest months. Amadeo and Chano spent many a Sunday afternoon under the arbor smoking and talking.

  It was there that Amadeo first heard about Spinoza, a Portuguese Jew who practiced philosophy in Amsterdam, and Dostoevski, the greatest writer of all time according to Chano, and Shakespeare, who could make poetry out of belching, and Voltaire who had no hair on his tongue. It was no secret that Chano was a walking encyclopedia, but few people knew that he was a secret poet and penned many poems that he recited to Amadeo while they sat under the arbor smoking and drinking. Amadeo remembers one in which he compared a vagina to the rising sun and another in which a tree trunk drips sap while pining for a lost love and a third about a flea that bites two lovers and thus causes their blood to unite. Amadeo argued with him that in these parts a mosquito would be a more appropriate insect to use in a poem of that sort, and Chano said he had thought of a flea first and that is what made its way into the poem. Easy to criticize the poet after the fact, he argued, but at the moment of creation he must utilize not what is proper but what is there. He never admitted to Amadeo that he had stolen his idea from a long-dead English poet who would never have written a poem about a barbaric mosquito.

  Amadeo longs for those days when all he needed was to sit in the shade with a bottle of wine, a cigar, and a friend or two to feel like the king of the universe. Better yet if they were playing dominoes, shouting out numbers as they slammed the pieces on the table. He remembers Ordññez the Spaniard who got up and ran around the table when he dominated with the capicúa and Delfín Morales, smug and self-reliant, who thought three moves ahead as if he were playing chess and would regale the group with stories of high-stakes games he had played in Havana. In one a lawyer lost a twenty-room house he had just built for his wife, and in another a sugar magnate who lost all his cash tried to wager his no-good homosexual son. I made millions, Morales said, and lost them all again. Amadeo, pass me the rum, and he would pour himself a glass which he would drink in one gulp. No matter how much Morales drank he always won and never left the table before the losers. I learned my domino manners in La Plaza del Vapor where you could get knifed for looking at a man the wrong way. The day he stopped coming to Amadeo’s backyard a certain legitimacy left with him and the games were not the same. Julia liked Morales less than she liked Chano and thought him a rogue. She was right, of course, but Amadeo admired Delfín Morales as much as he admired Chano, the latter because of his intelligence, the former because he had taken the money of powerful men and had seen them crumble afterwards. He died in a village north of Tarpon Springs, shot in the back by a man whose woman he stole.

  Amadeo hears the bell again. This time it sounds dull, off key. Someone’s died. The last thing he needs is a priest, especially one with the rod of sanctimony stuck up his ass, and is relieved to hear the bell pass by and the clanging recede down the hall. Time was he didn’t care what the priest did to him. Time was he didn’t care about anything and just wanted to be out of Santa Gertrudis. He is afraid of the priest and wants nothing to do with him. God doesn’t speak, God doesn’t meddle in human affairs. That’s what Spinoza said, according to Chano. God doesn’t care about Amadeo and Amadeo doesn’t care about God. Tomorrow he may be shivering in a soulless despair but today Amadeo has simply reached the conclusion that believing in God is like believing in the unknown. Julia, he’d rather believe in Julia. Leave it at that.

  Amadeo doesn’t know what language he is thinking in. Sometimes it is Spanish, sometimes English; sometimes it feels like no language at all. Nurse has come and fed him breakfast and talked to him of the weather—the first cool day in months and the clouds moving along, one puff after another, a herd of clouds, a herd of puffs like thoughts across the sky. Nurse says, he thinks she says, that her boyfriend is waiting for her after work. They are going to a picnic by the bay. Nurse has a boyfriend—tiene novio—and Amadeo is astounded at the thought. The clouds, the romantic picnic on the bay, Nurse and her boyfriend, life outside Santa Gertrudis, everything conspires in favor of English. Not that he cares. Spanish flies away like a sheet of onionskin paper, papel de china, and disappears to the south. Nurse’s voice is a register higher than usual, giddy, anticipating. She tells him that they are bringing their dog, a bull terrier with a black patch around the left eye. His name is Bull’s Eye and he is mean from being tied up all day, but once you let him loose, he runs back and forth across the grass, he chews up sticks; sometimes he jumps in the water and swims around in a big circle. Amadeo tries to speak in his own secret language of blinks as she swirls the spoon inside the baby food jar to get the last of the liver and onion paste she is feeding him. I’m making meat loaf sandwiches from last night’s leftovers and potato salad. Jackson is bringing beer and his guitar. He plays in a band, you know. Amadeo wants to tell her that his oldest son used to play guitar, too. He was so good people thought he should turn professional. Then he went to New York. By the time I saw him again he had given up his guitar and had picked up some new habits: the habit of dress, the habit of drink, and the habit of poetry. Amadeo has not seen his son—what is his name?—in a long time. Rubén, Rubén, that’s the name. He sent him a book he published, which didn’t make sense to Amadeo. It was dedicated, For Papi, that he should feel proud, but he did not feel proud. He felt confused and embarrassed. The poems didn’t even rhyme. Nurse is feeding him peach and is involved in her own talk about the picnic: The last time they went Jackson brought his fishing pole and caught a large sting ray he didn’t know what to do with once he pulled it ashore. Later on in the afternoon it th
undered and rained and they packed their things and got drenched running the few steps to the parking lot. It is an engrossing story for the simple reason that it makes Amadeo realize Nurse is sometimes more than Nurse—lover, dog owner, cook. Amadeo is waiting for his last spoonful and he can’t swallow fast enough to keep saliva from filling his mouth. It is not mango but lowly peach. Peach is ten times better than pear or prune. Pear is wet sand. Prune is mud. Nurse is lady mango and today is her day in the sun, swimming in mango sea, dripping with mango juice, making mango jam. She and her man will catch fish tonight, drink some beer, let their dog run free. They will go home and put a record on the phonograph, do a little dancing in the living room. Nurse will be out of her uniform and maybe she will look sexy. Jackson will kiss her meaty lips, move his hand up and down her back as they dance, and big oceanic Nurse, with thighs like whales, will be slurping back and wanting more. And those two beasts will grind against each other like mountains, like fleshy glaciers, like masses of clouds that form over the ocean in late afternoon and surge upwards in columns until they burst into great downpours of thunder and rain. Amadeo takes the last of the peach in his mouth, sees Nurse looming over him with a smile like a river, like a traffic light, like a big slice of mango in the white sky of her face.