Three Trapped Tigers

by G. Cabrera Infante

  I have seen too many MGM films not to have made the mistake of not wanting to be a typical Cuban in a moment like that, but rather to be like Andy Hardy meeting Esther Williams, so I turned around and went out onto the balcony smiling like a man who knows he is a gentleman or vice versatile. I remember I overlooked it all: Livia’s insinuation which was so vulgar as almost to be an insult, the Melvillian sun outside, Laura’s innocent double negative: with the elegance and almost the same walk as a David Niven of the tropics. I remember seeing some children playing in the park in the double sun of sky and cement while three Negro girls—their sitters presumably—were talking sitting in the shade of the young ficus in flower. I remember that I was trying to sit on an ideal bench in the shade of the trees of my dream when I actually heard them call me and I got the reality of the sun full in my eyes when I came back from my instant trip and turned around: it was Livia. When I went in Laura was wearing a white bathing suit, not a bikini or a two-piece but a “radiant white swimsuit,” to use Livia’s technical language: with a long white decolletage at the back plus the plunging neckline which joined between the breasts and was fastened at the neck: I have never seen her more beautiful than she was that evening—except naked except naked except naked. I said mistake (please see above) because from that day on, from that very moment, Livia in one section of her willful dream machine was manufacturing the desire, the anxiety, the necessity for me to see her naked: I know: since she called me and said Arsen, could you fasten me here, please, it’s slipping pointing with her shoulder blades to the strap of her bikini which was hanging loose, her hands groping for it with a lack of cunning that had to be a put-on. I knew: since I could see in the mirror that Laura didn’t like the way I lingered for a minute longer than a minute on that glamorous knot, that perfumed nudity, that ultimate in flesh fashion.

  No, there was no love lost between Laura and me that evening, not as yet. There was love, there is, there will be as long as I live, now. Livia knew it, my friends knew it, the whole of Havana/ that is to say the whole world/ knew it. But I didn’t know it. I don’t know if Laura ever knew it. Livia, sure, she knew it: I knew she knew it because she insisted that I come in when I went to look for Laura on June 19, 1957. Come on in she said. Don’t be afraid, I’m not going to eat you. I answered in a way that Livia thought was one more display of wit, you will take it as proof of sentimental shyness and all it is is a quote from Shakespeare: Give me thy hand, Messala I said. This is my birthday (Julius Caesar, Act V, Scene 1). Livia thought I was giving her a nickname and she laughed: Ay, the things you say, Arsen darling. Me Messalina? The only Messalina in this house is Hope Livialaura’s cook-maid-washerwoman from Jamaica who has a new boyfriend (loverboyfriend, you understand) every day. I went in. I’m alone she said. And the big black hope? I asked as she sat on the sofa, settled a couple of cushions between her shoulders and put her feet up: she was wearing pants (slacks in Capri blue lastex for Livia) and a blouse of a masculine cut and she took off her shoes before answering She’s out, my love combing her hair with her hand. She has the day off. She buttoned her blouse up to the neck and then she unbuttoned it again so I could end up seeing, to my surprise, that she wore a bra.

  We talk: about my birthday which wasn’t today but in three months’ time, about the anniversary two weeks back of the day when Bloom’s moll sitting on the bog had let flow a long stream of unconsciousness which would become a milestone, a millstone in the shape of a solid shit turd in literary history, of the photos that Códac had made of Livia and which were coming out in Bohemia: about everything—or almost everything, because a moment before I had made up my mind not to wait for Laura longer and to return home, when there emerged what Silvestre calls my Sub Topic. Códac suspects Livia said raising her collar with both hands that some of the pics (the best ones off curves) won’t get published. Really? I said with about as much interest as Bertrand Russell, say, would have shown in the matter. Why not? She smiled, then she laughed and went through the motions of moistening and pouting her lips, and finally she said Because I’m au naturel of course that’s not what she said—au naturel—but it’s what the exotic noise she made resembled most. They don’t have the guts, the noel cowards: my VOICE was roused in emphasis: The bastards! They know not what they do. I looked at her blue eyes, her hair beginning to turn platinum blond by the times and the black mole on her chin which she wore like a watermark to show, by transparency, the quality of her skin Forgive them, Levia: alleviate their sins her torso which was more bust than torso: fit for a pedestal or a museum or a bookshelf make their hell cool and levitate their skins her shapely legs, more insinuating than ever under those tightly stretched pants and finally her feet being intimately caressed by her finely formed long hand, an action a fashionable cold cream had turned into an erotic advance in every drugstore EVERYWHERE she wears OILSKIN! myself speaking with the voice of the announcer who spoke unctuously while her suggestive hands were vanishing-creaming her foot in the commercial on television and in films.

  When she had left off projecting round belly laughs toward the ceiling like smoke rings of laughter, she said Ay, Arsen, it’s impossible to be serious with you and she got up saying Do you want to see them? I didn’t understand what she meant and she could see it written all over my face. The photos, sweetie she said, opening her arms in a parody of extreme exasperation. What did you think I meant? I looked straight at her. The originals I said not the copies. She laughed. You’re always the same she said. Do you or don’t you want to see them? I told her I did au naturally and she went into the next room telling me to Wait. I looked at my watch but I can’t remember what time it was. But I do remember it was at just that moment that Livia called me from the bedroom. Come on in Arsen and in I went. The door was open and she was on the bed arranging the photos in which her breasts were displayed naked. They were large. I mean the photos: two or three of them almost covered the bed. She appeared in them:

  naked from the waist up, arms crossed/or

  with shirt half-open to midriff/ or

  wide open but not showing the nipples/ or

  naked, from the back/ or

  naked and hidden in pimpy shadows

  but never could you see her compleat bosom. I told her so. She laughed and pulled one photo out from under another and said What about this one then as though she was asking a question and answering it yes at the same time. I tried to take a look but she hid it behind her body. I didn’t see it I said. You’re not going to see it she said. The lady’s not for seeing and she laughed showing off her naked throat: she was a cockteaser or as the Spanish say una calientapijas: in Cuba we don’t have a word for that: perhaps because we have so many of those—I mean women for that. I decided to leave. She knew. Baby’s getting ever so cross she said aping a sob-sob. If Baby stays just a leetle longer Baby get such a big present. I stared at her and she stared back. There! she said and threw the photos on the floor: she was sitting naked, but now you could see her tits turned into udders by a wideangle lens that made them almost threedimensional: they were white and perfect and beautiful, so Livia was right to be proud of them, to be vain about the photos, to be angry at the negative for putting on print that wonder in which mere flesh is at the same time an aesthetic object and subject of passion. I don’t believe it I told her all the same. They’re 3-D tits good only for Arch Oboler. She froze in her tracks though she wasn’t moving. Who that? she asked and seemed almost furious. He directed Bwana Devil. In a single movement she bent down, picked the pic off the floor, all the rest off the bed, put them back into the closet and went straight into the bathroom. Don’t go! she said before closing the door. She came back again. Three minutes must have elapsed between her going in and coming out but it’s all simultaneous in my memory. She was coming out naked. I mean, she had on only some black, brief panties and nothing else. How about now? she said and came to me tiptoeing, her breasts swelling and arms and shoulders thrown back, a trick she must have learned from Jayne Mansfield, but
I didn’t laugh it off because in front of me (and I mean in front of me) I had a beauty you can sense with all the senses, see/touch/smell/hear/taste: see with your hands, listen with your mouth, taste with your eyes, smell with every pore. True or falsie? she said. It was another voice, full of emotion, not mine, that answered: Just a farce. I looked, she looked, we looked: and there in the doorway was Laura with a round box in one hand and in the other the little hand of a small blond and ugly girl. It was her daughter.

  I remember now (when the door of Livia’s new house opens) another door that closed and the handy, hardy words Laura said and which her suddenly icy tone rendered truly dramatic: Next time see that you close the door and she left. I remember her ever-present indifference whenever I called her, called on her, whenever I went to see her at the TV station and the affectionate coolness in which our relationship ended: phrases like How’re you and See you soon and So long for now taking the place of all our previous expressions of warmth, of affection—of love? Sonnyboy, you’re a sight for sore eyes! Livia said. Mirtila, look who’s here talking to the rooms/to the room she was entering leaving both doors open: walking in nothing but her panties as she sat down at the dressing table and said Come on in, Arsen, make yourself comfortable looking at me in the mirror I won’t be a minute touching up her lips again with the same care and precision and mastery of the brush with which the books of reproductions say that Vermeer painted the mouths of Dutch women, though maybe more scantily dressed—she, Livia, not Vermeer or his miniature women. The voice from the bathroom said Here I come and it sounded like a voice shouting shoot! because the shower curtain opened right after her voice and there she came: Mircea Éliade, Mirtha Aleada—or just plain Myrtle for you and for the press and for her friends, naked, yes, her as well: in her birthday suit and she said Ay, Arsen when she saw me excuse me I didn’t know it was you and went back to the bathroom without closing the door, put on a bathrobe (transparent) and came out again (naked) and began slipping her arms that were steaming from the heat and the shower into the white blue-flowered sleeves. But she didn’t fasten the bathrobe and she began rummaging for things in the closet/dressing table/medicine chest/suitcases on the living room floor/in the kitchen/refrigerator and every second moment she came back to the sofa-bed I was sitting on, to look out of the window and see if it was going to rain I aint gonna wear my new raincoat today either fuck it she said Ay perdona Arsen but it’s a REEL drag. There aint no seazns here nomore. Livia got up and went to the bathroom and while she was carefully dampening her made-up face she said She comes from the north, honey, from Canada (Dry, of corks). Mirtila emerged from among the suitcases with the skimpiest sky-blue panties in one hand and a pair of low-heeled white sandals in the other. No, I come from El Cotorro, but it’s still true there aint any seazns here nomore putting her panties on and Livia, you know quite well that if a woman’s gonna be reel elegant taking off her pale-blue bath-shoes and slipping her feet into her sandals as she talked theres gotta be at least two seazns. Livia burst out laughing. Do you hear the way she talks, Arsen, and then she wants to be a speakerine she said coming in and fastening her shoulder strap. Have to, child, HAVE to Mirtila sat herself at the dressing table O.K. have to or gotta to its still tru an elegant woman has to show off her vestry medieval vestiary I thought and in this shit of a country turning to me (in this cunt of a shitry) if you don’t mind me saying so, Arsen turning to Livia you can’t even do that getting up and yelling out of the window YOU CAN’T EVEN DO THAT louder you can’t do a goddamn fucking thing and she went back and sat at the dressing table again and looked at me Ay perdona tú but that’s how it is: Im up to here in it and she lifted her long skinny hand and pulled out a tuft of straw-colored hair dyed a hundred, a thousand times and quite dead now, embalmed in white dye, metallic, mineral, solid platinum: la chevelure de Falmer none other.

  Can I describe her breasts? I saw them outlined in the mirror. One night they were large on the point of breaking the chastity brassiere and youthful, now they were flaccid, long and ending in broad dark purple tips: I didn’t go for them. Livia’s breasts, when I saw them, had changed too and not for the better and I didn’t want to look at them again so I could keep the good/bad memory I’ll always have of them: it’s better to lose paradise for a deceiving red apple than for the dry, certain fruit of knowledge. At night, the other night, Mirtila looked like she was fifteen, sixteen, seventeen at most and now I couldn’t say how old she was, all I knew was that some time, in her childhood, she’d had rickets, because her chest bulged sickeningly and she was not so much slender as suffering from malnutrition. Even without any makeup her lips were violet, like her nipples, only paler and though her nose was incredibly well-formed and her eyes were big and clear with long lashes, you could see she had a Negro granny left behind, behind the chemistry of her makeup and physics of incandescent light: like Livia she didn’t go out anymore except at night, and with too much paint at that. I could see too that her eyebrows were shaven off altogether and this made her forehead much too wide. I didn’t go for her: this wasn’t the woman I’d volunteered to come for to this infernal heat on an August afternoon, to this twilight darkness, to this spiral of questions without answers that Mirtila as she was deciding how to paint her face throws at Livia who is just finishing making up hers and not paying any attention to:

  Livia luv can you turn on the light? Livia do you think I should clean my face with this Elisabetarden stringinrefreshin creem or with Ponze vanishin creem/ Livia’s not listening because she’s in the hall, near the window, putting mascara on her lashes/Livia honey should I put on a base of Lildefrance or should I try the AmoretaCreem. D’you think the Velada Radiante’s the best, don’ forget I’m gonna use Ardeena on top/ Livia’s sitting in the hall with a little lacquered box on her knees and is rummaging in it/ D’you think Arden Pink or Golden Poppy’s the best lipstick, I can’t decide, I don’ dig the taste. I don’ know if the Revlon Louie Exvee is right for me. What kind of a nites it gonna be sweetie/ Livia is pulling out a baroque ring from the black box/ The Rosyhorrora’s reel fine but I don’ know if it agrees with the rest of the stuff/ Livia’s pulling out a pair of earrings to go with the fingerring and puts them on/ I think after all I’ll put on the Revlon choral Vynilla and forget it: I’m tired of choosing/ Livia’s pulling from the lacquered box a long necklace of cultured pearls: everything Livia’s wearing has a certain quality, but a fake/mediocre quality: once Jesse Fernández the photographer/who was taking a series of shots of her/told me: “Baby, O.K., so here in Havana she’s a model, but in New York or L.A. she’d be nothing but a hundred-buck call girl”/ Livia d’you think the Lena Rubysteen Caraseeds’s better than the Mascaramatic or should I use the I shado or the Arden Cosmosticks/ Livia’s going into the kitchen to pour herself a glass of milk, a minidinner for her pet ulcer/ Now here’s a problem. Lissen, sweetie, I topped off my bath with a bucketful of Morny salts, June Roses they were, and now I can’t think what perfume to put on. D’you think I should use the Misdiorr or the Diorama. I think the Diorisimo is better/ Livia’s sitting again on the same seat in the hall slowly sipping her glass of milk/ But lissen, pet, Maggy de Lancon or the Lanvin Arpeege’s reel nice too, but just fine. Right, I think I’ll put on the Jivency Interday, cos it always brings me luck/ I look at Livia and for the first time she looks back/ her mouth makes a four-letter word/ and she waves her hand in boredom. Mirtila gets up and puts on a black bra and a matching black pantie girdle, and begins rolling on her stockings (dark mauve) sitting on the edge of the stool at the dresser: I look at her closely and she looks like a praying mantis/a samurai warlord/an ice hockey goalie. Let’s go out this evening I say, I can’t think why. We gotta parade some gowns she says without stopping a moment the delicate work of sliding her long shapely legs back into their dark silky elastic cocoons. How about later on? I ask. I’m comin right back here to sleep. Last night I didn’ sleep no wink, not a wink, but not a one. Now she gets up and looks at me. How do I look? I look at
her and say Great and it’s true she does, she looks real good: she is another woman. And I still gotta put my dress on: its brand new. I’m just going to ask her for the third time/ Everything happens in threes/ but I think what the hell. Luckily Livia calls me so I get up and go over. Come back some other time, Arsen Mirtila says. I don’t know what I said back.

  This peasant, she just comes from the sticks Livia whispers to me and I get more and more sick of her. Every day she gets more and more cocky and she tries to give me lessons and all and the whisper gets louder ME who invented her! Then right out loud How do I look, loverboy? she asks me. Who’s the fairest of us all? I laugh. Thou art, Your Majesty, but under Hollywood Snowwhite is alive and well and balling with the magnificent 7 dwarves. She slapped me/deliciously/in the face with her invisible fan. You’re always the same she says jokingly aping Mirtila. No, I’m being serious, you’re very beautiful. You’re both beautiful. I don’t know who to choose. I open the door. But I Livia says ‘ve always been your real love and I go out. Yes I say from the corridor. My one and only. I bump against the railings and begin to go down the stairs cursing them: one foot in the void/ another foot into the abyss/ another one into nowhere. When’ll they turn on the lights in this fucking house?

  Fifth session

  I remember when I was my husband’s fiancée. No, I’m lying, I wasn’t engaged yet, but he used to come and invite me out to the movies or take a walk and the day came when he invited me home to meet his family. It was Christmas Eve and it was already late, about eight o’clock, when he came to pick me up, and I was already beginning to think he wouldn’t come and everybody in the building rushed to their balconies to see us and my mother didn’t go to the balcony, because she knew they were all looking and she was very proud of me because my fiancé was rich and because he’d come to pick me up in a convertible to take me to dinner in his home and she told me, “Everybody in the neighborhood has seen him, child. He’ll have to marry you now. See that you don’t disappoint us” and I remember how disgusted I felt with my mother. It was Christmas Eve but it was very hot and I felt very distracted because I had put on the only presentable dress I had, a very summery one, and to show I had put it on for a purpose I said to my fiancé as soon as I got to the car, “It’s really hot, Ricardo,” and he said, “Yes, extremely. Would you like the top down?” He was very considerate and courteous and so kind.