The Cigar Roller

by Pablo Medina

  Soon after Nurse II leaves the room, Orderly comes to change him. There is a nervous way about him whenever he enters, as if he were doing something illegal. Amadeo thinks he should start drooling just to unsettle him more but decides against it. Instead he follows Orderly’s actions as he pulls off the covers, turns him over, wipes him, and puts on a clean diaper. No drooling today, Orderly asks. You learned your lesson, you did. And don’t you mess with me again or I’m going to whip you. Whip all you want, negro de mierda, I won’t feel it. Amadeo keeps from drooling and instead blinks forcefully several times. Orderly looks at him through cold, unfeeling eyes, unbuckles his belt and slaps it across Amadeo’s belly, then brings it down the other way and slaps him again. Amadeo blinks faster now, daring Orderly to do it again. Orderly calls him a sick piece of dead flesh, fat old motherfucking scumbag cocksucking turd and just as he runs out of epithets, Amadeo starts slobbering, tightening his lips and slurping the saliva out so that a creamy froth dribbles down his lower lip and chin. Eyes wide open, Orderly is screaming son of a sow, disgusting dog-shit-eating asshole faggot dried-out-crusted-over slop bucket. Amadeo hasn’t felt this good in years, blinking and slobbering with all his will to drive Orderly mad, and he succeeds better than he thought. Orderly is doing a dance of rage around the room, screaming at the top of his lungs when he jumps on top of Amadeo and wraps the belt around his neck. Nurse II reenters the room and seeing Amadeo’s face turning red and his eyes bulging out of their sockets, grabs Orderly by the shoulders and hurls him off the bed. Amadeo has never seen such a thing. Orderly is struggling to get up and calling him a monster, a white devil, a fat-ass zombie; he is crawling out the door while Nurse II, who has a fierce look on her face like a vicious Latin terrier, pummels him around the head and ears.

  Some time later several people come to visit Amadeo: a man in a blue suit he has seen only once before, the bald doctor who is checking his blood pressure, the physical therapist, and a blond woman holding a clipboard. He is fine, the doctor says, no harm done. The man in the dark suit looks at his watch. There is no need to call the police, then. Miss Argyle, he says to the blond, I want that man fired immediately. Physical Therapist is going on about Orderly, claiming he knew all along there was something wrong with him; the doctor is saying that Amadeo will survive all of them the way he is going, he has the heart of an eighteen-year-old, and the blond woman, after writing something in her clipboard, asks the man in the dark suit if the family should be notified. He answers absolutely not and leaves. The other three stand around uncomfortably a moment before following him out. Amadeo is surprised by the feeling of relief he experiences when he is left alone. A long time passes—it seems a week—before Nurse II reappears bearing a tray of food. The paste she feeds him this time tastes of tar but he is so hungry he swallows it quickly. She follows that with banana and as he takes the last spoonful he notices her watch says 5:30. If he can survive a week, he can survive a month, if he can survive a month, he can do so forever. Imagine that: Amadeo the Immortal. He blinks gratefully at Nurse II, who changes him and pulls down the blinds for the night.

  In the dark his tongue strains at language, language from inside his chest, gruff or gentle words, severe or soft, syrupy or dry as talcum powder, like fish, like rabbits, like an army of spiders scattering over the landscape. He tries to say tomorrow but he thinks Gomorrah, tries to say preacher and thinks prick her. Mania appears as Mañara, the surname of a literary playboy. Desire—for women, for money, for work, for respect—has made Amadeo an exile from himself. He knows he has lost the narrative of his life and all he has left is the flotsam of memory and language, which move inside him like figments of the past. He remembers how small stick figures repeated themselves on white paper, one with chestnut hair and black mouth, another green with yellow eyes, one with four arms, another with a smile from eye to eye, the last one bearing something blue like happiness on her shoulders. She was the most distant. He tried many tricks to get close to her—wearing a hat in the morning, going barefoot in the afternoon, playing games, working hard, being faithful to his wife, not being faithful. He drank good wine and rode around in fancy cars. He had his head shaved like a penitent and then let his hair grow like a bohemian. She remained distant, encouraging him to continue with his snares that trapped only him, kept him from living his life—he was no father, he was no husband. He was a singñn, a fucker, but not a lover. That is why she, the distant one, stayed away. Amadeo has lost all hope but for whatever comes to him during the day and flees from him at night. And language? It fills his head, it makes him slobber, it churns around in his stomach, but it refuses to come out of him. It lives on in his memory, tied to a scene or a consequence of something he did or neglected to do. From the darkness of his room, Amadeo Terra tries once again to think of the future, to see himself on the other side of the river that divides life from death, but all he can visualize is the same parched earth, the same circular roads, the cloud of dust that floats over him. How does it feel to be whipped, to be touched? He cannot remember.

  Amadeo Terra, cigar roller, entered a cigar factory at twelve years of age. He was already the man who was to follow the boy. Somebody gave him a broom and he started sweeping. Later, when he had swept the floor of the factory twice, a roller called to him. He was a thick-lipped mulatto with a round face and red kinky hair. How much did the boss say he was paying you? He didn’t say. You working for free? The mulatto took five cents out of his pocket and gave it to him, then went over to the foreman. Now you will be paid, the mulatto said when he sat back down. And don’t be a verraco. Nobody works for free. This is how he started, sweeping floors, watching the rollers at their job and listening to Elpidio. Amadeo learned to tell the good leaf from bad, which leaf burned right, which left. If you wanted to make a good cigar you couldn’t cheat on filler and wrapper. Sooner or later you would hear from the other rollers, who would no sooner roll a bad cigar than cheat on their mothers. Not that they were saintly men by any means, but in the world of tobacco a man is judged by his ability at the rolling bench and by his capacity for work. If a man is a cheat that doesn’t matter; if he is an adulterer, no matter, or an abuser or a thief or a street thug or an alcoholic. As long as he is a good roller, he is respected, and he is treated properly and with deference. In the solitude and darkness of his room Amadeo understands many things that passed him by when he had all his faculties. He understands, for example, that a man will pick a profession according to his station in life, and there was none better for him than being a cigar roller, un torcedor: a vocation of smoke in tune with his life, with anybody’s life.

  Elpidio the mulatto sat him at a table in his house and taught him the art of rolling a cigar. In time Amadeo learned how to identify the precise moment when the product began to take shape in his hands. Elpidio called it la vitola, the spirit of incipient perfection, which drove you to roll not one cigar but a dozen, a hundred, all the same shape, the same size. Defy God and do it every day for a lifetime. Elpidio did not give him talent—that he brought with him—but technique and work, work until he was so tired he couldn’t see at night and the hands took over with their own will, and he worked some more and dreamed he was asleep and sleeping he worked until he woke and found himself working still. Elpidio and his wife Lala let him sleep in the larder among sacks of onion and rice with slabs of tasajo and bacalao suspended over him, on a canvas cot that smelled of the Spanish soldier Elpidio bought it from. He heard noises at night, creatures scurrying around on the floor. Rats, he didn’t mind rats. It was spiders he dreaded and spent a sleepless first week making sure there were none in the larder. Lala fed him huge plates of roast pork, rice and beans, and boiled plantains, seven days a week without any variation because Elpidio ate nothing else. You can’t roll cigars on an empty stomach, Elpidio liked to say while he sat at the table consuming plate after plate of food his wife dutifully placed before him. A man needs meat on his bones, he added. What good is the meat on his bones now, Amadeo asks hims
elf. All Elpidio ever wanted was to stuff himself with all the food Lala could prepare. A strange ambition, Amadeo thinks, that he himself adopted. The difference was that he hungered for much more than food. In the two years he lived with Elpidio and Lala he gained seventy pounds and grew eight inches so that he towered over his teacher. He also became a better cigar roller than Elpidio, which is the primary reason he left the house, since you cannot stay with a teacher once your talent has surpassed his. When Amadeo walked out the front door for the last time, he could feel Lala behind him trying to hold back her tears.

  He hears a soft but persistent noise at the window, a rasp, a peck, he can’t exactly tell. If there were wind he would blame it on the wind; if there were a tree outside he would blame it on a branch tapping the glass, or a little bird that has landed on the window ledge, or an angel who wants to be let inside. He takes a deep breath and holds it to see if he can hear the noise better, but the noise won’t come again. Instead he hears the beating of his heart increasing in intensity until he cannot hold his breath any longer and lets it go. As he does so, he feels his chest deflate, and he is suddenly afraid that if he doesn’t breathe in immediately his soul will disappear. He inhales deeply and his soul settles back wherever the soul resides.

  When Amadeo came home from Elpidio’s house, his father was waiting for him with the one-way passage to Campeche. There were no embraces, no greetings for the returning son. Now you will know what hardship is, Amadeo remembers him saying. Half a foot taller than his father, Amadeo looked down at his flushed face. There was sweat streaming down his temples and blue veins swelling the forehead, and for a moment Amadeo was afraid, but the fear left almost immediately and was replaced by a deep disdain. Little did the old man know the favor he was doing the son, who would have done anything, even join the insurrectionists, to get away from him. Amadeo did not acknowledge his father’s words and walked past him to greet his mother.

  He stayed in the house two days, surprised at how small everything seemed—his old bedroom where he could barely turn around without hitting the iron bed or the night table, the crowded living room, which not long ago had seemed cavernous, and the dining room, in which he had once run around freely chasing imaginary enemies, where he now had to walk sideways between the chairs and the wall in order to get to his seat at the table. In the morning of the third day he gave his brother Tavito twenty-five of the fifty pesos he had saved, packed a canvas bag with a few belongings and the food his mother had prepared, and left for the capital to sail to Yucatán.

  Amadeo hears the noise at the window again. He tries to discern a pattern to the tapping—three quick taps followed by a slow one—then it changes to two fast followed by two slow and then to three solitary slow ones and a rasping noise like a stick rubbing against concrete. He remembers the time on Nurse II’s watch: 5:30. a.m.? p.m.? How many days, weeks since that 5:30, how many minutes? What year is it, ’44, ’53? The tapping is gone and he hears rigging stretch in the wind, the prow cutting waves, the swish, the plash, the canvas flapping, sailors’ voices and the squawk of the sea birds. Above them the fierce sun of the Gulf. The two-masted schooner Los Tres Hermanos flies over the sea. Amadeo has never been on anything that fast before. He remembers the captain’s name, Bernardino Torres. He is a friend of his father and has promised him to take good care of the son, and Amadeo is surprised to learn this from the captain, for he has never imagined his father could be the least concerned about his welfare or have friends of any sort. Square-shouldered and fierce, the captain has the weather-beaten look of the seafarer but he is dressed like a bookkeeper, with a tie and a dark vest on which hangs a gold chain. With easterly winds pushing them along, they make Telchac in twenty hours, Celestún at noon of the following day. The noise comes again and turns into an itch he can’t scratch. He smells trees and the wind coming off the sea, hears hammering, tastes tar. He feels the brine cutting his face, the sun, lower now, burning his ears. In an hour, as the sun sets behind the land, they can see a thin line of shadowy houses along the shore with the lighthouse off the port bow. Amadeo reaches for the gunwale as he looks at the port, sad, almost deserted, bearing no comparison to the great port of Havana, the city that will grow inside him and which he will use to compare the cities he knows and find them lacking. The noise is a banging now, like that of a pylon driver, churning and lifting then giving off a great sigh as it falls again. Underneath it there is a silence he tries to reach, as if his hearing were a mechanical sand shovel digging into the sea bottom. He is moving up and down with the boat, which has slowed almost to a stop, the shore a hundred yards away. He is holding on for dear life, the mate is yelling out orders, the captain astern looking up at the mast. Amadeo can make out the shape of the dock in the darkness, a black rectangular form that extends over the water. The voices of the men fall away and the ship docks. Amadeo is peering at a precipice of desolation he has never known before.

  Morning and the benevolent shadow of Sor Diminuta come to him suddenly. Her smell wakes him and he hears the mellifluous language of her prayer. She knows what the others don’t: that he thinks, that he sees, that he smells, that he hears. Buenos días, Sr. Terra, she says. ¿Qué tal pasñ la noche? It is her voice, not his. ¿Está listo para el baño? A stiff, accented, measured Spanish, too proper, but Spanish nevertheless. It is an unexpected question, coming from someone who is hardly a lover of bathing. What he wants is to be held, soothed, told the sounds he hears in the night are echoes of his fear, of his happiness, of youth haunting his old age. Sor Diminuta begins disrobing him when the loud persistent hammering comes again. If she has noticed the noise she gives no sign. She has taken the sponge to him, scrubbing his body with unusual speed and dispatch. Why in such a hurry, Diminuta? Do you have a tryst with God? She does his neck, his shoulders and chest, then moves to his belly, which jiggles as she scrubs. If he could tell her to slow down, let her hands move to their own rhythm so that he can imagine their warmth, their weight. By the time she is done her upper lip is glazed with sweat. He would tell her, too, that the noise at the window is too much, it has to stop. Slow down, Diminuta. Let your hands go where they will do the most good. There, that’s it. The pecking again, followed by rasping, then a single clap. Mother of Mary, there is a song coiling into him like smoke. Mother of Mary, this woman smells like a haystack. How does he know how a haystack smells? He remembers, he knows. If the wrapper tears when the cigar is lit, it is too dry. A biting taste means the filler is old. Mother of Mary. An uneven burn, what they call canoeing, means a poorly rolled product, or one that has lain too long in the same position. Not enough draw means a tight roll. There is something out there beyond the window wanting to get in. Mother of Mary. Language like smoke. The sister brings the rolling table closer. On it are two jars, one brown like her habit, the other yellow, and his heart skips a beat. Bean, sweet and earthy, he swallows every spoonful she offers. Then the glorious yellow he has waited for. It enters his mouth, spreads all over his body; he is aglow with the taste of mango. A flood of yellow courses through his veins, reaches his heart and glows there like a fructose sun. There is no happiness like his and he feels the elephant on his chest, language pressing down. Happiness and pain at once so that he doesn’t know which is which, the joy of tasting mango, his childhood returning with every spoonful, or the elephant making it hard to breathe.

  No, that elephant is not language, it is not fear or his country in his dim imagining or the grief of a poorly lived life. He realizes this with a spoonful of mango in his mouth—taste of sun and truth commingled, taste of time. The sun surrounds the words, the puddle of flesh in the white expanse of the bed. The sun rises, takes the route of the sky and leaves. He knows it will return tomorrow, that it will serve again as the lantern of his days, but the final night is eternal. What’s that? The final night is eternal. Stop the melodrama. Amadeo cannot tell if the voice he hears is Diminuta’s or his own, or a combination of the two. Night is a physical phenomenon, not a metaphysical one. The
rest is the anguish of a human being about to die. The world is in me. I moved like a top, doing what I had to do. You are not a top. They say every human is the world. Oriental foolishness. You are an infinitesimal point in the universe, or, if you prefer, you are that line that has always obsessed you. You began in A and now you are arriving at B, your final destination. Linear? Linear, circular, who cares. How about the emotions—fear, love, hate, envy, egoism, joy, avarice, lust? All can be reduced to two: love and fear. Love drives you to the fire, fear keeps you from putting your hand in it. Many times I have burned myself knowing I was going to burn myself. Some people burn themselves only a little. Others completely. Accept it or not, you are a member of the first group. You are neither mystic nor saint. To be a member of those clubs you have to throw yourself fully into the fire. Amadeo doesn’t know what to say. What happened? I don’t know. Yes, you do. A long time has passed. Or none. That door is shut. It must be opened. I was not well. That we know. I came home in a mood. Alfredo González, a union captain, asked for my resignation and denounced me before the membership. He said I was taking money from the owners. I went at him, but the others held me back. Alfredo, the consumptive who was nothing but skin and bones. If I had caught him, I would have snapped his body in two. Amadeo feels his throat tighten. Alfredo, whose wife drenched him in kerosene and set him on fire while he slept because he had been unfaithful to her. Diminuta, don’t leave me. Amadeo’s eyes cloud up and the noise outside the window has become like a scream or the aspiration of a huge mouth that is sucking him in. I am dying. You have been dying a long time. And you? Don’t worry about me. I have God. What happened? He fell. Albertico. He did not fall. I arrived home in a rage, as if someone had injected fire in my veins. At this moment Amadeo feels the opposite, a frozen substance in his body and a scared hen fluttering about in his head. Albertico was running around the kitchen playing one of his games, making a nuisance of himself. His mother kept telling him to stop, that he was going to tip over a pot, but the boy wasn’t listening. I took him by the arm and threw him against the wall like a rag doll. His head hit the corner of the windowsill. He fell motionless to the floor. He didn’t actually fall; he slid like liquid down the wall. Something I couldn’t control took possession of me. I threw the china closet to the ground. Julia was boiling water on the stove. I took the pot by the hot handles and threw it out the window. I wrecked the kitchen. The pots came down. I turned the stove over. I opened the cupboards and emptied their contents on the floor—flour, sugar, beans—and Albertico on the floor with his eyes unfocused, staring at nothing. On his nostrils there was a small bubble of blood growing. It popped and started, then it popped again and stopped altogether. Julia was kneeling next to him slapping his hand, trying to revive him. She realized her efforts were useless and gave me a look that contained all the disdain and hatred of the world. That is not all. The story about Julia becoming a curandera is a lie. Yes. A subterfuge. What is that? A way of avoiding the truth. Yes. You made it up to cover your shame and your guilt. All those people came to the house to pay their respects, not to solve their problems. Yes. Julia did not go crazy. She loved you. Yes. Underneath her hatred of you there was all that love—broken, battered, ground to useless dust. She couldn’t afford to stay with you. Diminuta, you are all I have left. You have yourself. Amadeo can no longer swallow and he begins to slobber. His breathing becomes labored. The noise is an intolerable hum that is pouring out every cell of his body. I killed him. Your own son. My own flesh and blood I never loved. I have never loved anyone. Not even yourself? No. And Julia? And your other children? No. And they knew it. That’s why they never visit. Can I rest? No. Death is not like that, it has nothing to do with rest. But this hospital, the nurses, the other patients. That is your reality and you have to live with it for the rest of your life, which could last one day or many. Then I am not dead yet. You’re not, but look at yourself. You can’t move, you can’t talk, you can’t control your bowels. You can’t even swallow your spittle. But I produce it. I drool therefore I am. ¡Coño! Babeo ergo sum. Amadeo remains quiet a while, watching Diminuta put the cap back on the mango jar, the salve of his salvation. I am leaving now, Mr. Terra. Don’t go, he says. No te vayas. I will not be coming back, but my prayers will be with you. I will not live without you, Diminuta. She has gathered the jars, the juice bottle, the bib, and the towels and looks at him one last time. Somewhere in her eyes there are tears for him but they are not coming forth. He calls that other voice, the one that made all this up, but it does not respond. His eyesight becomes blurred as if he were underwater. The noise in his body is driving him crazy. Amadeo is swimming in the great ocean of sadness and destitution. It is a gray sea with uniform waves that repeat themselves toward an indefinite horizon. Just beyond his reach are the faces of Chano, his parents, Julia, Albertico, all the dead he has known. He swims toward them to touch them, to say to them what he is feeling and what he kept himself from feeling. His sorrow is greater than anything he has ever experienced. The elephant is pressing down on him, but he continues swimming, no matter that he can barely breathe. His head goes under, then comes up again. He is swinging his arms wildly, kicking his legs. There is no solution. Just as he is getting close to the faces they dip under the surface and reappear a few yards away, nearer the horizon, the darkness, the silence. His lungs are filling with water. He can hear it bubbling inside as he tries to take in air. His eyesight clears a moment and he discovers that all those faces floating in the gray sea, all those eyes, all those mouths, are identical. It is his face he is looking at, himself he is reaching for.