Three Trapped Tigers

by G. Cabrera Infante

  —Señor Solaún, the man said in a voice which wouldn’t have been heard if it hadn’t been for the silence of that star-crossed moment to which we were both, he and I, mute witnesses. Solaún looked him up and down and I realized then that one doesn’t need to be taller than the other man to look him up and down. The distant drums ceased to roll and in their stead was a roar: it wasn’t the noise of lions, but of Solaún speaking.

  —But, my good man, how dare you! Stopping me on the staircase!

  No more words were needed, because the visitor, the supplicant, the professional beggar or all of those men disappeared and in the place they had occupied all there was was a poor hunched-up tall man, who had been made a fool of, reduced finally to derision. I wondered if I should laugh or applaud or make remonstrances, but I didn’t do any of these things because I was watching the scene in total fascination. Or was it fear? Solaún noticed me and said to the man:

  —Go and speak to my secretary, and he continued on his way up the staircase. But this time he was a man like anybody else climbing an ordinary staircase in the normal way.

  It was I and not the intruder on the stairs who followed his advice and now Yossie or rather Josefa Martínez was lowering the drawbridge and I was crossing the feudal moat with the peasant awkwardness of the Surveyor admitted to the Castle for the first time.

  —Please come in, Viceregent Solaún said, with all the asideness one can muster when some transaction of vital importance is being undertaken at the same time: signing a check for the wife so she can go shopping, saying one last word to your querida on the phone, lighting that Churchill (he was so rich he could afford the luxury, metaphorically speaking, of setting fire to a British prime minister every hour on the hour) cigar with its afterlunch aroma.

  —What can I do for you, young man?

  I looked at him and was on the verge of saying: Sort my whole life out and my death as well, perhaps. What I actually said was:

  —The thing is, you know, actually, I have a problem . . .

  —Sí, sí.

  —I’m not making very much money.

  —What! But we gave you a raise only six months ago!

  —Yes, that’s true. That was when I got married, but . . .

  —Sí, sí.

  It was the same as if he’d said: Don’t say another word, but he knew how to arrange those two words or rather that single word repeated so skillfully that I yielded.

  —The thing is we are, my wife that is, she is expecting . . .

  —Sí, sí. A son.

  I should have corrected him: Or a daughter, possibly even a hermaphrodite. But it was he who spoke first:

  —These are big words. Have you thought about it seriously?

  The truth was I hadn’t thought about it, neither for better nor worse, I just hadn’t thought about it! Children you don’t think about them, you don’t even feel about them, nor do they seem to come. They come, that’s all. They’re almost like errata. Oh, I made a slip of a son in this Evanol layout! I’d make it an interruptus lay only.

  —Think? I suppose I didn’t think about it.

  —Ah, Ribot, about children you really have to think.

  Fucking e una cosa mentale, Leonardo said. Tell you what, the next time I sit at my table, I’ll prop my chin on my hand, like Nobel in all the portraits of him, and pin a notice on the door: DO NOT DISTURB. I AM DESIGNING A BEAUTIFUL EIGHT-POUND BABY.

  —You’re right, I said servilely, —you have to design, I mean think about it.

  The moment had come when the master could make a conciliatory gesture toward this sylvan serf.

  —Let’s see, he said. —What can I do for you?

  For a minute I said nothing. I hadn’t expected my petition to be an answer. I had come to make requests, all of which I had rehearsed beforehand. What can the land baron do for Badsin the Sailor? That was all I could think of at the moment. Meet me on shore? Throw me a life saver? Lose me over the horizon? I decided to make the request which came easiest. Or was it the most difficult?

  —I was wondering, if it’s possible, if you could do me the favor of giving me a rise, I mean a raise. Only if it’s possible, of course.

  I had used exactly the right grammatical construction to convey to the keeper of the castle the idea of respect and hierarchy and necessary distance. All of which predisposed him to charity, both public and private. But he didn’t reply. At least, not immediately. This is the secret of great men. Of little great men too. They know the value and price of everything, including words. And silence, like musicians. And gestures. Like actors or Buddhists. Solaún, as if he were performing a religious ceremony, drew his pigskin eyeglass case out of the inside pocket of his jacket and slowly and with great deliberation took out his bifocals. He put them on ceremoniously. He stared at me, he stared at the blank sheet (or should I say he stared at the sheet blankly?) he had on his desk pad, then calmly took a perfectly useless pen from an unnecessary inkwell, because pen and ink were, like the engraving, the tobacco box, the letter case, the paper knife and the pearl, purely for ornament. He proceeded at this moment to create a silence. I should have been able to hear all the noises of the Creation but in fact all I heard was the Om of the air-conditioner, the pen tattooing its path over the sheet of paper and his Aeolian belly playing reveille in the afternoon. The sphinxter spoke.

  —How much do you make?

  —Twenty-five a week.

  Another silence ensued, which seemed to me to be forever. This time it was the turn of Pandora’s box of smells. But there was hardly anything to follow the scent except for the faint odor

  of Guerlain drops in the blue handkerchief that rose like a sartorial horizon a little way off the coast of his lapel pocket. I think it was then, through a connection of metaphors, that I began gazing attentively at the masterwork of etching which wedded cartography and pederasty. His actual hand, already perfectly done (before this tonsorial adjective my hands were the barely conceived fetus of a hand and the hand of that anonymous artist who had so perfectly engraved that scene of the romantic tragedy which would one day become allegory, the hand which had since returned to dust and oblivion, was the nonidea of a hand, according to the concept of a hand a manicure has)—his hand was clutching the pen as if it were a bare bodkin. If this hadn’t been the beginning of fiat looks and the start of my marine reflections, I would have heard the sounds of the written abacus, because just like Vincent, I have an ear for painting. In fact, if I were modest I would have been the composer of Pictures at an Exhibition and not Moussorgsky. A visibly sonorous movement robbed me of these illusions and allusions worthy of (or copied from) Bustrófedon.

  Viriato Solazin y Zulueta, Senator for life of the Republic, man of affairs, honorary president of the Centro Basco and of the Rotary Club, founding member of the Havana Yacht & Country Club, leading shareholder of Paperimport and managing director of Solaz Publications, Co. Ltd., who together with his sons, daughters and sons-in-law, grandchildren, nephews and great-nephews took up an entire page in the Social Register of Havana (illustrated), spoke again and at last, alas:

  —Twenty-five a week? Goodness me, Ribot, but that works out to be a hundred pesos a month!

  Before I knocked I looked at my nails: all of them were embellished with a black crescent of grime. I went back down the steps for the second time. The first time was because I’d seen that my shoes were caked with mud and I’d gone down to clean them in the street. It had been a bad idea after all. The heel of the left shoe had almost come off and I’d had to mend it by banging it on the sidewalk like a maniac. The two parts refused to stay together and of course an old woman walking her dog had to stop and watch me from across the street. “I am Cuba’s answer to Fred Astaire,” I yelled, but she acted as if she hadn’t heard me: it was her dog that answered, barking like one more lunatic in that quiet street. Now I was hunting on the ground for a twig and when I’d found one I carefully cleaned my nails with it. I went back slowly up the marble steps, studying
the sedulous symmetry of the garden and gaping at the white stone facade of the building. On reaching the top, I thought it might be better to return another day, but my hand was already on the knocker and, in any case, would I be able to return? Even today I hardly had the strength for it.

  I knocked once, meaning to give the knocker a discreet tap, but it slipped from my hand and sounded like a gunshot: it was a heavy chunk of bronze. Nobody came. Thinking it would be better if I went away, I knocked again, twice this time and more softly. I heard a sound like footsteps but it was some time before anyone came to the door. A man in uniform opened it.

  —What’s the matter? he asked as though letting me know that I had already knocked three times too often. He used the familiar form of the pronoun but his tone was certainly more contemptuous than loving—tú?

  I began rummaging in my pockets for the piece of paper I had brought with me. I couldn’t find it. I pulled out a bus ticket and the address of Edelmiro Sanjuán, professor of diction and phonetics, and the last letter my mother had sent me, all crumpled up and without its envelope. Where could I have put that damned paper? The man was waiting and he looked more capable of slamming the door in my face than of being patient. Finally I found it and gave it to him. He took it with an antiseptic gesture. He thought this would be the end of it. I told him whom it was for and that I expected an answer.

  —Wait here, he said and closed the door. I examined the knocker carefully. It was the amputated paw of a bronze lion which grasped a bronze ball in its huge bronze claws. I heard some children playing in another part of the building, shouting names at each other. A bird was whistling and cackling tiatira tiatira to itself in the trees of the park. It wasn’t hot, but it looked as though it would rain in the evening. The door opened again.

  —Come in, the man said reluctantly.

  The first thing I noticed when I went in was a delicious smell of cooking. Perhaps they will invite me to lunch, I thought. For more than three days I had had nothing but coffee with milk and an occasional piece of bread dipped in oil. I saw a young man opposite me (he was to one side of me as I entered, but I turned around), tired-looking with ruffled hair and hollow eyes. He was badly dressed, his shirt was filthy and his loosely knotted tie hung free of his collar, which had no button or clasp. He needed a shave and a limp unkempt mustache drooped round the corners of his mouth. I raised my hand to shake his, bowing slightly at the same time, and he followed suit. I saw he was smiling and sensed that I was smiling too: we both got the message at the same time: it was a mirror.

  The fellow (whoever he was: butler, secretary, bodyguard?) was still waiting for me at the end of the corridor. He seemed impatient or perhaps bored.

  —He says you can sit down, he said, pointing to a door on the left, the only way out of the dark hallway where I could just make out the vases of artificial flowers, comfortable armchairs, a table with magazines. The open door gave a glimpse of another room which was brightly lit and welcoming. (From the dark hallway it gave the impression of being luminous.) I went in. I saw the light was streaming from the windows: two wide-open bay windows. There was a hooded buff wicker chair, an easy chair in dark brown leather, a Viennese rocking chair, and also a desk of inlaid wood and a spinet, I think, or baroque piano. There were a number of pictures in heavy frames on the walls. I couldn’t see what they were portraying or what colors they were because too much light shone from the varnish and concealed them. I think there were other pieces of furniture and before I sat down with the distinct impression I had entered the house of an antique collector three things happened simultaneously or one on top of the other. I heard a sharp vibrating sound followed by a very loud slap, I heard a shot and I saw something like the hand and arm of a man in uniform closing the door.

  I sat down thinking that there was someone calling from outside and when I settled in my chair (I noticed that I was utterly exhausted, to the point of nausea) I saw the angel. It was a statue of biscuit or some other unglazed porcelain, on a pedestal of the same material—or of plaster. It was a mighty angel wrapped in a cloud with a rainbow over his head. He had a little book open in his hand, his right foot was set on the sea, and his left foot on the earth, and he lifted up his right hand toward heaven. What attracted my attention particularly was the little almond-colored book which looked like marzipan, almost edible. I felt so hungry (I only had one small cup of coffee on the street that morning) that I would have eaten the book if the angel had offered it to me. I decided to forget it.

  I would have forgotten it anyway, because the door opened and a girl appeared, a very young woman who looked at me without any surprise. She was drenched from head to foot: water poured from her black hair and over her face, her arms and her legs. Her cheekbones were high and wide and her square chin was dimpled at the tip. With her large fleshy mouth, her broad high-bridged nose and great black eyes with still darker lashes and brows she would have been beautiful. But her forehead was too high, convex and masculine: perhaps because her wet hair clung to her skull. She stuck out her tongue to sip the water or in her effort to fasten the upper part of her yellow bikini. One of the straps had slipped and she supported the bra with her armpit only, holding her left hand behind her. Medium height, with full-fleshed thighs arching in front, she was very suntanned, although her skin could never have been pale. She looked at me again, her mouth almost touching her chest, as if trying to hold onto an imaginary elusive towel with her chin.

  —You seen Gay Breel? she asked and without waiting for an answer she turned around and went away, leaving the door open. I saw she had finally unstrapped the top half of her bikini. Her long tanned shoulders glowed alongside a fluid furrow of flesh which glided down her waist to disappear into her sudden monokini. I got up and closed the door. As I was closing it I heard another loud knock, another shot.

  The door opened again before I sat down. I half thought that it was another unexpected visitor, but, no, I decided finally: it was him. In his hand he was holding my note. He looked at me, or rather, because I was standing between the open windows, he tried to look at me. He lifted the piece of paper instead of greeting me.

  —Th-this is y-yours. It was neither a statement nor a question, but it wasn’t the monotonous voice that disturbed me, nor his stutter (unexpected: I had expected a different voice, maybe more virile or authoritative: so many stories had been told about him and they all sounded like legends or tall tales), nor the fact that he walked toward me raising the paper like a questioning finger, nor that he didn’t use the familiar tit when he spoke to me (everyone else did in this house), nor that his manner was insolent: the thing that made my blood run cold was that in his left hand he was holding a large black pistol. He walked toward me and I thought of stretching out my hand to shake his, but which one should I shake? Then he went to the window and closed it, shutting out the voices of the children, the cackling song of the bird and the amber light: he was banning the evening. Then he sat down opposite me. He noticed that I was too fascinated by the weapon in his hand to look at him.

  —T-t-target practice, he said, without bothering to elaborate. He wasn’t either young or old: he was aged. I had never seen him in the flesh: only a passing glimpse of him on television, eating hot dogs one after another to advertise a brand of sausages. That had been a long time ago and now he was a celebrity, a tycoon, a political leader. He really must have eaten the hot dogs because he was fat, indecently so, in his white flannel pullover, sky-blue trunks and fashionable dark-blue espadrilles. His horn-rimmed eyeglasses hung loosely between bushy eyebrows and untidy mustache (an “English” mustache, the papers called it), and his hair was more curly and less black than on television. He looked like Groucho Marx but it was obvious that he had some Negro blood in him. “Un ruso,” someone had told me, “a Russian mulatto.” His eyes became small and greedy as he looked at me, craftily.

  —So you’re María’s son, he said abruptly.

  —So they tell me, I answered, smiling. He didn’t smil
e back.

  —You want something.

  —Yes, I said. —I want some advice.

  What? It was his first question. Instead of an answer a torrent of music gushed out of my mouth: violent, rhythmic, nonstop. It was rock ‘n’ roll being played in some part of the house. Under my chair, perhaps? He didn’t stop to discover the source of the sound: he knew better. He leaped up and rushed toward the door, opening it with his right hand (I wondered what he could have done with the piece of paper), waving the pistol in his other hand and yelling above that music that poured through the door and drove all the air up against the far end of the room:

  —Maga!

  The music continued, undulating and barbaric.

  —Maga!

  Between the hot electric guitars, the moans of the saxophones in heat and the screams of some Spanish version of Elvis Presley, I thought I could make out a human voice.

  —Magalena, you cunt!

  The music was turned down and remained only as a discreet backing to that sweet innocent voice.

  —What did you say, Peepo?

  As soon as she said Peepo I knew he wasn’t her father.

  —That noise, he said.

  —What noise?

  —The music.

  —What about the music? Don’t you like it?

  —Sure, honey, but not so loud, ti prego.

  —I just turned it down, she said, no more than a voice in some part of the house.