Three Trapped Tigers

by G. Cabrera Infante

  A short time later Cuba came back to where I was. She didn’t say anything. She just put a hand on my shoulder. I removed the shoulder and her hand with it. She remained silent, she didn’t even move. I didn’t look at her, I looked down the street, and, strangely, I was thinking then that Vivian would be arriving and I wanted Cuba to disappear and I believe I made a pretense of suffering a mental agony as strong as a toothache. Or did I really feel it? Cuba slipped away quickly but then turned around and said to me so softly I could hardly hear her:

  —Love, forgive me, do.

  It could have been the title of a bolero. Of course I didn’t tell her.

  —Have you been waiting long? Vivian asked me and I

  thought it was Cuba speaking, because she had arrived almost at the same moment as Cuba had left and I wondered if they had seen each other.

  —No.

  —You didn’t get tired?

  —No, it’s O.K., really.

  —I was afraid you might have left. I had to wait till Balbina fell asleep. She hadn’t seen anything.

  —No, I wasn’t bored. I was smoking and thinking.

  —About me?

  —Yes, about you.

  I was lying. I was thinking about a difficult arrangement we were rehearsing in the evening, when Cuba had turned up.

  —You’re lying.

  She seemed flattered. She had changed the dress she had been wearing at the cabaret for the one she was wearing the day I had first met her. She looked much more a woman, but there was nothing pale and ghostly about her as there had been then. Her hair was tied up in a high coil and she had made herself up freshly. She was almost beautiful. I told her so, leaving out the almost, of course.

  —Thank you, she said. —What are we going to do? We’re not going to stand here all night, are we?

  —Where do you want to go?

  —I don’t know. You decide.

  Where should I take her? It was after three. There were many places open, but which of them would be suitable for a girl from a rich family? A mean well-lighted place like El Chori? The beach was a long way off and I would spend my salary getting there in a taxi. A late-night restaurant like the Club 21? She would already be sick of eating in places like that. Besides, Cuba would be there. A carbaret, a nightclub, a bar perhaps?

  —How about San Michel?

  I remembered Cué and Silvestre, those identical twits. But I thought that by now the frantic locomotive of love that does not dare reveal its name would have reached the terminus, that the hour of the she-wolf had ended and that there would only be a few couples left—perhaps heterosexual.

  —That sounds like a good idea. It’s not far.

  —That’s a euphemism, I said and pointed to the club. —The moon isn’t far.

  There was almost nobody in the San Michel—which Silvestre called a queendom by the sea—and the long corridor, a colony of sodomites earlier in the evening, was deserted. There were only two couples—a man and a woman near the jukebox and two shy well-adjusted queens in a dark corner. I couldn’t count the bartender in because I could never tell if he was a fairy or if he pretended to be one to do better business. He doubled up for the waiter.

  —What’ll you have?

  I asked Vivian. A daiquiri for her. O.K., that makes two of us. We had already drunk three daiquiris abreast when a group of people came in making a lot of noise. Vivian whispered under her breath, “Oh my God, not them I”

  —What’s the matter?

  —They’re people from the Bilmor.

  They were friends of hers, from her club or from her mother’s club or her stepfather’s and of course they would recognize her and of course they would come to our table and of course there would be introductions and all the rest. By all the rest I mean smiles and knowing looks and two of the women in the party getting up and saying excuse me to all the western world and then going to la toilette. I whiled away the time completing with my index finger the circles of water left by the glasses and making new circles with the moisture I forced to drip from the glasses with my fingertip. Someone showed compassion and put on a record. It was La Estrella singing “Be Careful, It’s My Heart.” I thought about that enormous, extraordinary, heroic she-mulatto who held the portable black mike in her hand like a sixth finger, singing in the Saint John (all the nightclubs in Havana now have the names of exotic saints: schism or snobbism?) hardly three blocks from where we were, singing from a pedestal raised above the bar, like a new and monstrous dark goddess, as the wooden horse must have been worshiped in Troy, surrounded by fanatics more than by fans, without mus. accomp., disdainful and triumphant, her devotees hovering around her like white moths in the light, blinded by her countenance, seeing nothing but the luminous flow of her voice because what issued from her professional mouth was the song of the sirens and we, every man in her public, we were so many Ulysseses lashed to the mast of the bar enchanted by that voice which the worms would never have for lunch because here it was singing now on the record, a perfect and ectoplasmic facsimile, dimensionless as a specter, as the Right of a plane, as the Spirit of Saint John, the beat of the drums: this is the original voice and a few blocks away there was only its replica because La Estrella is her voice and it was her voice that I heard and I headed for it flying by no instruments, led blindly by that sound flaring up in the night and hearing her voice, seeing it in the dark, suddenly I said, “La Estrella, lead me to harbor, you are my astrolabe, the north of my diamond needle, my Stella Polaris!” and I must have said it out loud, because I heard people laughing at our table and around us and someone was saying, a girl, I think, “Vivian darling, but you’ve changed your name,” and I excused myself and got up and went out to the drumhead. I pissed to the tune of “Be Careful, It’s My Heart.” Demo: “Be careful, it’s my cock / Not a policeman’s club / You’re holding in my hand.”

  VII

  When I returned, Vivian was by herself and drinking her third daiquiri in a row and mine was waiting for me in my place, frozen, almost solid. I drank it straight without speaking and as she had finished hers, I ordered two more and we didn’t say a word about the people whom I no longer knew whether they’d been there or if I had dreamed or imagined them. But they had been there, because “Be Careful, It’s My Heart” was playing for the third time running and I saw the stains of our visitors’ glasses on the black formica.

  I remember that around us the indirect lighting formed a halo of Vivian’s blond hair when I began without saying a word to remove the hairpins from her bun. She gazed into my eyes and she was so close she was squinting. I kissed her or she kissed me, I believe it was she who kissed me, because I remember wondering in my drunkenness where that little girl who was hardly as much as seventeen years old had learned how to kiss. I kissed her again and while I was caressing her shoulders with one hand, I was managing to untie her hair with the other. I opened her zipper and slid my hand right down inside below her waist and she wiggled and twisted, but I don’t think I was putting her off at all. She wasn’t wearing a bra and that was the first thing that surprised me. We followed the same kiss along and she was biting my lips real hard and saying some nothing or other at the same time. I slid my hand round the side of her back toward her breasts and at last I felt them, small but seeming to bud, to blossom, to develop nipples under my hand. O.K., so maybe I was drunk and just a lousy bongo player, but I can also be an eroticist if I want to. I left my hand where it was, not moving a finger. She was speaking inside my mouth and I felt something salty and thought she had broken my lip. But they were tears.

  She slipped away from me and threw back her head and the light fell on her face. It was completely drenched. Some of it was saliva, but the rest was tears.

  —Please be good to me, she said.

  Then she went on crying and I didn’t know what to do. Women who cry always exile me to a state of confusion, and I was drunk which made me even more alien: all the same they alienate me more than the next drink.

  —I
feel so unhappy, she said.

  I thought that she was in love with me and that she knew—she knew it—about In Cuba (that’s Doña Venegas’ wicked name) and I didn’t know what to say. Anyway I shut up like a clam. Women who are in love with me ostracize me more than women who cry and more than the next drink. Now as a last banishment she was crying and the waiter came with two extra drinks nobody ordered. I think he wanted to break our clinch. But she went on speaking with the referee there and all. She wasn’t exactly a clean fighter, believe me.

  —I wish I was dead.

  —But what on earth for? I said. —Things aren’t at all bad here.

  She gazed into my eyes and went on weeping. All the water in the daiquiris was coming out through her eyes.

  —I’m sorry, but it’s terrible.

  —What’s terrible?

  —La vida.

  Another good title for a bolero.

  —Why?

  —You know.

  —Why is it terrible?

  —Because that’s how it is. Ay!

  I let her go on crying.

  —Lend me a handkerchief.

  Lend me your tears. I lent her my handkerchief and she dried her tears and the saliva and even blew her nose in it. My only handkerchief. The only one I had for the night, I mean: I have more at home. She didn’t give it back. I mean she didn’t ever give it back: she must still have it at home or in her handbag. She swallowed the daiquiri in one gulp.

  —Forgive me. I’m an idiot.

  —You’re not an idiot, I said, trying to kiss her. She didn’t let me. Instead she pulled up her zipper and straightened her hair.

  —I want to tell you something.

  —Please do, I said, trying to appear so attentive and understanding and disinterested that I must have looked like the hammiest actor in the world trying to look disinterested and understanding and attentive while speaking to a public that wasn’t listening.

  —I want to tell you something. Nobody knows about it.

  —And nobody else will.

  —I want you to swear you’ll never tell anyone.

  —Of course I won’t.

  —Above all that you won’t tell Arsen.

  —I won’t tell anyone. I was sounding now like a drunkard.

  —Promise me.

  —I promise.

  —It’s very difficult. But the best thing is to come clean with it. I’m no longer a virgin.

  I must have had the same expression as Cué had during the episodes of Haydn, Handel, Mozart & Co., wholesale makers of music and embarrassment.

  —It’s the truth, she said. I didn’t answer.

  —I didn’t know.

  —Nobody does. You and this person and myself are the only people who do. He won’t tell anyone, of course. But I had to tell it or I would have burst. I had to tell someone and Sibila is my only friend, but she’s the last person in the world I’d want to hear about it.

  —I won’t tell anyone.

  She asked me for a cigarette. I gave it to her and put the packet back in my pocket. I didn’t feel like smoking. When I offered her a match she hardly brushed my hand, except for the trembling of her hand which communicated itself to mine through clenched and sweaty fingers. Her lips were trembling as well.

  —Thanks, she said, blowing the smoke away and without a moment’s pause she said, —He is a very mixed-up young boy, very young, very lost and I wanted to give a meaning to his life. How wrong I was!

  I didn’t know what to say: the surrendering of virginity as an act of altruism left me absolutely speechless. But who was I to discuss the possible avatars of the Salvation Army? After all, I was only a bongo player.

  —Ay, Vivian Smith, she said. She never used the Corona and it reminded me of Lorca, who always introduced himself as Federico García. But there was no tone of complaint or even self-reproach in her voice. I believe she wanted to assure herself that she was there and that I wasn’t spitting in her face, which I didn’t do because for me it was also only a dream. Only not the dream I had longed for.

  —Do I know him? I asked, trying not to look either too eager or jealous.

  She didn’t reply at once. I gazed at her steadily and although it seemed there were less lights at the bar, she wasn’t crying. But I saw that her eyes were watery. Two tears later she answered.

  —You don’t know him.

  —Are you sure?

  I looked her straight in the eyes.

  —Oh well, I suppose you do. He was in the swimming pool

  the day you were there.

  I didn’t want to, I couldn’t believe it!

  —Arsenio Cué?

  She laughed or tried to laugh or a mixture of both.

  —God no! Can you imagine Arsen being mixed up for as much as one day of his life?

  —In that case I don’t know him.

  —Yes you do. It’s Sibila’s brother. Tony.

  So I did know him after all. But it didn’t bother me to know that that cross-eyed driveling shit of a merboy with his crucifix around his neck and identity band on his wrist and all, that this sophomoronic citizen of Miami was Vivian’s Number One Mixed Up Boy. What did bother me was the fact that she said is. If she had said was, it would have been a passing incident whether it had happened by chance or if it had been forced on her. This could mean one thing only, that she was in love. I saw Tony in another light now, with different eyes. What could she see in his? Eyes, I mean.

  —Ah yes, I said. —I think I know who he is.

  I was delighted that Cué had stamped on his hand after all. No, more than that, I wished Tony, like me, could have his little soul on the tip of his fingers.

  —Please, por favor, don’t ever tell anyone. Promise me.

  —I promise you.

  —Thank you, she said and she clasped my hand neither mechanically nor tenderly, nor with any interest. It was just another thing her hand could do expertly: like lifting it to her face to light a cigarette, for instance. —I am sorry, she said, but she didn’t say why she was sorry. —I’m truly sorry.

  It had to be true. It was the night when all the world felt sorry for me.

  —Eso no tiene la menor importancia!

  I think my voice sounded a little like Arturo de Córdova but also a little like my own.

  —But I’m sorry and I feel bad about it, she said, but she didn’t say why she had felt bad about it. Perhaps it was her telling me that made her feel bad. —Could you please get me another drink.

  I tried beckoning the waiter with my finger but to succeed I would have had to go out hunting waiters: it is not as easy as you’d imagine: Frank Buck wouldn’t have been able to bring a Cuban waiter back alive. When I turned around to look at her she was crying again. She was swallowing her tears as she spoke.

  —You really won’t tell anyone?

  —No, really. Nobody.

  —Please. Nobody, but nobody, swear.

  —I will be quiet as the grave.

  “Gravedigger, I plead with you / That for my good you’ll sing / Over her grave a requital / Leave her to hell / Let the devil treat her well / Don’t cry for her, gravedigger / Don’t cry for her! / You just dig.” (Chorus)[1]

  I HEARD HER SING

  What do you want? I felt like Barnum and followed Alex Bayer’s crooked schemes. It occurred to me that La Estrella had yet to be discovered, a verb invented for Eribó and all those Cuban Curies who spend their lives discovering the properties of radio, television and the silver screen. I told myself that the gold of her voice had to be separated from the muck in which Nature or Providence or whatever it was had enveloped her, that this diamond had to be extracted from the mountain of shit it had been buried in and what I did was to lay on a party, a motivito as Rine Leal would say, and it was to Rine that I went to make out as many invitations as possible. As for the rest, I would invite them myself. The rest included Eribó and Silvestre and Bustrófedon and Arsenio Cué and the Emcee who eats shit but I have to invite him because he’s the
compere at the Tropicana and Eribó would bring Piloto & Vera and Franemilio, who would enjoy the occasion more than anyone because he’s a pianist who’s very sensitive and besides he’s blind, and Rine would bring Juan Blanco who’s not a compere but a composer without a sense of humor (this music, not John White alias Johannes Witte or Giovanni Bianco: he’s the composer of what Silvestre and Arsenio and Eribó, days when he’s a reluctant mulatto, call serious music) and I even almost invited Alejo Carpentier and the only person we wouldn’t have would be an impresario, because Vítor Perla wouldn’t come on my account and Arsenio Cué would refuse even to speak to anyone in broadcasting and there the matter rested. But I could rely on publicity.

  I gave the party or whatever it was in my house, in that single large room I had which Rine insisted on calling a studio and people began arriving early and others came who hadn’t even been invited, like Gianni Boutade (or whatever his name is) who was French or Italian or from Monaco or all three of them at once and who was the king of manteca not because he was an importer of edible fats but because he was the biggest pusher of marijuana in the world and it was he who tried to apostle for Silvestre one night and he took Silvestre to hear La Estrella at Las Vegas some time later when she had become famous everywhere, and who really thought he was her impresario, and with him came Marta Rayo and Ingrid Bergamo and Edith Cavello who I think were the only women who came that evening because I was very careful that neither Irenita or Magalena or Manolito el Toro née Gary Baldi or any other creature from the black lagoon should turn up, whether they were centauras (the centaura is half woman and half horse and is a mythical beast from the Zoolympus of Havana-by-night and which I cannot or won’t describe now) or not or anyone like Lupa Féliz the well-known composer of boleros, who is all horse, and Jesse Fernández came, a Cuban photographer who worked for Life en Español and was doing a story on Havana a city open day and night. The only person lacking was La Estrella.