Three Trapped Tigers

by G. Cabrera Infante

  I loaded the cameras (my own) and told Jesse he could use any of them and he chose a Hasselblad I had bought recently and said he wanted to try it out that night and we started comparing the Rollei and the Hassel and went on to talk about the Nikon as compared with the Leica and then we got onto exposure times and Varigam paper which was new in Cuba at that time and all those things photographers talk about and which are the same as long and short skirts and the cut of clothes for women and averages as ranking order for pelota fans and sharps and flats plus pauses and demisemiquavers for Marta and Piloto and Franemilio and Eribó and liver and mushrooms (that is, the nonedible ones: cirrhotic livers, athlete’s foot) for Silvestre and Rine: themes for the Boredom Variations, bullets of bullshit to kill time with, talking about today what you can think about tomorrow and Todo es posponer, a brilliant epigram Cué had stolen from somewhere or other. Rine meanwhile was pouring the drinks and passing the olives and hors d’oeuvres around. And we were talking and talking and an owl flew past my balcony hooting and Edith Cavello hooted back Solavaya! which is an antidote for the bad luck hooting owls always bring when not hooted back at. Then I remembered I had told La Estrella we were going to give the party at eight so that she should turn up at least around half past nine. I looked at my watch and it was ten past ten. I went to the kitchen and said I was going out to buy some ice and Rine looked surprised because he knew there was plenty of ice in the bathtub and I went down to search all the seven seas of the night for this mermaid reincarnated as a sea cow, for a Godzilla that sings when the water is running, for my Nat King Kong.

  I searched for her in the Bar Celeste, among the tables of people eating, in Fernando’s Hideaway like a blind man without his white cane (because it would have been useless, because not even a white cane could be seen in there), like a real blind man when I came out to the glare of the street on the corner of Humboldt and P, in the Café MiTío with its open terrace where all the drinks are fume-flavored, in the Las Vegas trying to avoid meeting Irenita or any of her species and in the Humboldt bar, and I went to Infanta and San Lazaro really fed up and didn’t find her there either but when I returned, I passed the Celeste again and there she was at the back of the room absolutely drunk and alone and carrying on an animated conversation with the wall. She must have forgotten the whole thing because she was dressed as usual, wearing her habit of the Discalced Carmelites but when I appeared at her side she said, How’s things Doll Face, come over and join the cause, and she smiled from ear to ear. I looked at her. She was being rude, of course, but she disarmed me by what she said next. I wasn’t brave enough, she said, I didn’t have the courage: you are too refined and well-bred and respectable for me. I’m just a poor nigger, she said, ordering another drink and gulping down the one she had, the glass a thimble in her hand. I made a sign to the waiter to forget it and sat down. She smiled at me again and began humming something I couldn’t understand, but it wasn’t a song. Come on, I said, let’s go. No no, she said, making it rhyme with yo-yo. Come on, I said, nobody’s going to eat you. Me, she asked—it wasn’t a question—eat me. Look, she said, raising her head, before any of you so much as touches one curl of my woolly-wig, I’ll swallow you whole, she said, tugging hard on her hair dramatically or comically. Come on, I said, the whole of the western world’s waiting for you at my house. Waiting for what, she said. Waiting for you to come and sing so they can hear you. Me, she asked, hear me, she asked, and they’re in your house, they’re in your house, right now, she asked, all I have to do then is to stay right here, because you live next door, don’t you, and she began to get up, in the doorway and I’ll start singing at the top of my voice and they’ll hear me, she said, no, it won’t work, and she fell back in her chair which didn’t complain because it was no use to any chair, habituated and resigned as they are to being chairs. Yes, I said, it will work, but only if you come to my house because that’s where it’s all at, and I put on my confidential manner, there’s an impresario there and all, and then she raised her head or rather she didn’t raise her head, she tilted it on one side and raised one of the thin stripes she had painted over her eyes and looked at me and I swear by John Huston that this was how Movy Dick looked at Gregory Ahab. Had I succeeded in harpooning her?

  I swear by my mother and by Daguerre that I thought of loading her onto the freight elevator, but since that’s the one the servants use and I knew La Estrella didn’t want to be hauled up like a piece of freight or taken for a servant, the two of us took the little elevator facing us which thought twice about going up with its strange cargo, and then ascended the eight floors creaking painfully. We heard music from the corridor and found the door open and the first thing La Estrella heard was the sound of “Cienfuegos,” that Montuno tune, and there was Eribó standing in the middle of a group of people endlessly explaining its montuno or off-beat choruses and Cué with his cigarette-cum-holder in his mouth walking up and down, approving everything, and Franemilio standing near the door with his hands behind his back, leaning against the wall the way blind people do: knowing more by the tips of their fingers where they are than other people do with their eyes and ears, and La Estrella reacted badly on seeing him and shouted her vintage words pickled in alcohol in my face, Shit, you motherfucker youse been conning me, and I didn’t know what she meant and asked her why and she said, Because Fran’s here and I know he’s come to play the piano and Ise not singing with an accompanist, listen here, Ise not singing, and Franemilio heard her and before I could think let alone say anything, he said, Are you completely off your head? Me with a piano in the house! he said in his soft voice. Come on, Estrella, come on in because here it’s you who brings the music, and she smiled and I called for attention everybody and asked them to turn off the record player because La Estrella was here and everybody applauded. See what I mean? I told her, see what I mean? but she wasn’t listening to me and was already about to burst into song when Bustrófedon came out of the kitchen carrying a tray of drinks and Edith Cavello behind him with another and La Estrella took a drink as she was passing and said to me, What’s she doing here? and Edith heard her and turned around and said, Listen you, it’s not me who shouldn’t be here. I’m not a freak like you, and La Estrella with the same movement she had made taking the glass threw the drink in Franemilio’s face because Edith Cavello for whom the pitch was meant had ducked her head quickly but as she stepped aside she stumbled and tried to cling onto Bustrófedon and grabbed his shirt and he also tripped over, but since he has a great sense of balance and Edith Cavello has a degree in gymnastics neither of them fell over and Bustro made a gesture like a trapeze artiste who has just completed a double somersault without a net and everybody except La Estrella, Franemilio and I applauded. La Estrella because she was apologizing to Franemilio and wiping his face with her skirt, which she had lifted exposing her enormous purple thighs to the warm air of the evening and Franemilio because he couldn’t see a thing and I because I was closing the door and asking everybody to turn it down to a dull roar please it was almost twelve and we didn’t have permission for the party and the cops would be here any minute. They all shut up. Except La Estrella, who when she had finished apologizing to Franemilio turned to me and asked me, So where’s the impresario? and Franemilio without giving me time to make anything up said, He didn’t show, because Vítor didn’t come and Cué is involved in some private feud with the television people. La Estrella gave me a real mean look, narrowing her eyes till they were as thin as her eyebrows, and said, So youse been conning me after all, and she didn’t give me a chance to swear to her by all my fathers and old artificers as far back as Niepce that I didn’t know nobody had come, I mean no impresario, and she said, Then you can go fuck yourself, I’m not singing, and she stomped off to the kitchen to pour herself a drink.

  I think the feeling was mutual and La Estrella and my guests as well resolved to forget they lived on the same planet, because she stayed all the time in the kitchen eating and drinking and making a lot of noise an
d Bustrófedon back in the main room inventing tongue twisters and one of the ones I heard was the one of the tres tristes tigres en un trigal and the record player was playing “Santa Isabel de las Lajas,” sung by Beny Moré, and Eribó was keeping time, beating on my dinner table and on one side of the record player and explaining to Ingrid Bergamo and Edith Cavello that rhythm was a natural thing, like breathing, he said, everybody has rhythm just like everybody in the world has sex and you know there are people who are impotent, men who are impotent, he said, same as there are women who are frigid and nobody denies the existence of sex because of this, he said, nobody can deny the existence of rhythm, what happens is that rhythm is a natural thing like sex, and there are people who are inhibited, he said—that was the word he used—who can’t play an instrument or dance or sing in tune while there are other people who don’t have this problem and can dance and sing and even play several percussion instruments at once, he said, and it’s the same as with sex, impotence and frigidity are unknown among primitive people because they’re not embarrassed by sex, nor are they embarrassed, he said, by rhythm and this is why in Africa they have as much sense of rhythm as of sex and, he said, I maintain, he said, that if you give a person a special drug which is not marijuana or anything like that, he said, a drug like mescalin, he said and he repeated the word so everybody should know he knew what he was talking about, or LYSERGIC ACID, and he was shouting now above the music, he will be able to play any percussion instrument, better or worse, the same as someone who is drunk can dance either better or worse. So long as he manages to stay on his feet, I thought and I told myself that that was a whole load of shit and I was thinking this word shit, it was at the exact moment I was thinking this word shit that La Estrella emerged from the kitchen and said, Shit, Beny Moré, you’re singing shit, and she entered with two glasses in her hands, drinking left and right as she walked and she came to where I was standing and as everybody was listening to music, or talking or making conversation, and Rine was standing on the balcony getting miserable, playing those games of love that are called el mate in Havana, she sat down on the floor and leaned against the sofa and as she drank she rolled about on the floor and then she stretched herself out flat with the empty glass in her hand and lay down along one side of the couch which wasn’t a modern one but one of those antique Cuban sofas, made of wicker and wood and woven straw or pajilla and she got right under it and stayed there sleeping and I could hear her snoring underneath me sounding like the sighs of a sperm whale and Bustrófedon who couldn’t or didn’t see La Estrella said to me, Nadar, mon vieux, are you blowing up one of your balloons? meaning (I knew him too well) that I was farting and I remembered Dali said once that farts are the body’s way of sighing and I almost started laughing because it occurred to me that sighing is the soul’s way of farting and snoring is the sighs and farts of dreaming. But La Estrella went on snoring without anything like this to bother her at all. Suddenly I realized that tonight’s fiasco was mine and only mine, so I got up and went to the kitchen to pour a drink which I tossed down silently and I went silently to the door and left.

  Third session

  Doctor, do you think I should go back to the theater? My husband says the only thing that’s wrong with me now is that I have a surplus of nervous energy which I never use up. At least, before, when I was in the theater, I could imagine that I was someone else.

  I HEARD HER SING

  I don’t remember how long I spent walking the streets nor where I was because I was everywhere at once and as I was returning home at two o’clock and was passing in front of the Fox and the Crow I saw a man and two girls come out and one of the girls was freckled and had big tits and the other was Magalena, and she greeted me and introduced me to her girl friend and boyfriend, a foreigner with dark glasses, who told me straight off that I looked like an interesting person and Magalena said, He’s a photographer, and the fellow said with an exclamation that sounded like a belch, Agh, so you’re a photographer, come along with us, and I wondered what he would have said if Magalena had told him I worked in a market: Agh, so you’re a porter, a proletarian, how interesting, come with us and have a drink, and the fellow asked me what my name was and I said Moholy-Nagy and he said, Agh, Hungarian? And I said, Agh no, Vulgarian, and Magalena was dying of laughter, but I went along all the same and she walked in front with the woman, the wife she was of the man who was walking beside me, a Cuban Jew she was and he was Greek, a Greek Jew, who spoke with an accent which I didn’t know where the fuck it came from, and I think he was explaining to me the metaphysics of photography, saying it was all a game of light and shadow, that it was so moving to see how the salts of silver (My God, the salts of silver: the man was a contemporary of Emile Zola!), that is to say the essence of money, could make men immortal, that it was one of the paltry (why not saltry) weapons that being had in its wars against nothingness, and I was thinking that I had the luck of the iris to be always meeting these well-stuffed metaphysicians, who ate the shit of transcendence as though it were manna from heaven, but we’ve just arrived at Pigal and are about to go in when Raquelita, sorry, Manolito el Toro runs into us and goes and kisses Magalena on the cheek and says, How’re you, pal, and Magalena greets her like an old friend and this philosopher who’s standing beside me says, She’s very interesting, your lady friend, seeing her clasping my hand and saying, And how’re you, you old Russian mulatto, and I tell the Greek by way of introduction and correction at the same time, My friend Señor el Toro, Manolito, a friend of mine, and the Greek says, That’s even more interesting, meaning he had begun to know what I already knew, and as Manolito’s leaving, I say, And how about you, Plato, so you like efebos? and he says, What’s that you said? and I say, So you like young boys like Manolito, and he says, Young boys like her? I sure do! and we sit down to listen to Rolando Aguiló and his combo and soon the Greek is saying to me, Why don’t you ask my wife for a dance? and I tell him I don’t dance and he says, It’s not possible, a Cuban who doesn’t dance? and Magalena says, There’s two of them because I can’t dance either, and I tell her: A Cuban man and a Cuban woman, you mean, and Magalena starts humming “Fly Me to the Moon” which is what the band is playing but she stresses the word fly on every beat. Then she gets up, Excuse me, she says, emphasizing her s’s which is the attractive mannerism of some mulatto women of Havana, and the Greek Jew’s wife, this Helen who launched a thousand ships in the Dead Sea, asks her, Where are you off to? and Maga answers, Just the Ladies’, and the other woman said, I’m going too, and the Greek, who’s a modern Menelaus who couldn’t care less about being betrayed by an odd Paris or two, gets up and when they’ve left he sits down again and looks at me and smiles. Then I understand. Fuck me, I tell myself, this is the island of Lesbos! And when they return from the “Ladies’,” this combination of two tones of the same color, these two women whom Antonioni would call Le Amiche and Romero de Torres would paint with his broadest brush and Hemingway would describe just a little bit more subtly, when they sit down I say, ‘Xcuse me but I’m leaving, because I’ve got to get up early, and Magalena says, Ay, but you’re going much too soon! and I follow the thread of her song and say, Part of you I take with me, and she laughs and the Greek gets up and shakes my hand and says It’s been a pleasure meeting you, and I say the pleasure’s all mine, then I take the hand of this biblical high priestess for whom I would never be a Solomon or even a David and I say, Encantado and I’m off. Magalena catches up with me at the door and says, Are you really going? and I say, Why do you ask? and she says, I don’t know, but you’re going so early and so suddenly, and makes a gesture which would have been charming if she hadn’t made it so often and I say, Don’t bother, I’m quite all right: sadder but wiser, and she smiles and makes the same gesture again, Adiós amor, I say, and she says, Ciao, and goes back to her table.

  I think of going back home and wonder if there would be anyone still there and when I’m passing the Hotel Saint John I can’t resist the temptation not of
the traganíqueles, the coin-slot machines, the one-armed bandidos in the lobby which I would never put a dime in because I wouldn’t ever get one out, but of the other Helen, of Elena Burke who sings in the bar, and I sit at the bar to hear her sing and stay on after she’s finished because there’s a jazz quintet from Miami, cool but good with a saxophonist who looks like the son of Van Heflin’s father and Gerry Mulligan’s mother and I settle down to listening to them play “Tonight at Noon” and to drinking and concentrating on nothing more than the sounds and I like sitting there at Elena’s table and ordering her a drink and telling her how much I dislike unaccompanied singers and how much I like her, not just her voice but also her accompaniment, and when I think that it’s Frank Domínguez who’s at the piano I don’t say a thing because this is an island of double and triple entendres told by a drunk idiot signifying everything, and I go on listening to “Straight No Chaser” which could very well be the title of how one should take life if it wasn’t so obvious that that’s how it is, and at that moment the manager of the hotel is having an argument with someone who just a few moments ago was gambling and losing consistently and to top it off the guy is drunk and pulls out a gun pointing it at the head of the manager who doesn’t even wince and before he could say bouncer two enormous fellows appear and tackle the drunk and grab his gun and give him two punches and flatten him against the wall and the manager takes the bullets out and slides back the bolt and returns the empty gun to the drunk who still doesn’t know what’s hit him and tells them to frisk him and they shove him to the door and shove him out and he must be some big shot as they haven’t made mincemeat of him yet and Elena and the people from the bar turn up (the music has stopped) and she asks me what’s happened and I’m just going to tell her I don’t know when the manager waves them back saying Aquí no ha pasado nada and then with a flick of his hand orders the jazzmen back to their music, something the quintet more asleep than awake do like a five-man pianola.