Three Trapped Tigers

by G. Cabrera Infante

  I begin to laugh seismically but Silvestre interrupts me. Wait a moment, hang on a sec, as Ingrid says, that’s not the end of the film. We spent the night, Silvestre tells me, or the bit of the night that was left on the best of terms and succored by her expert hands, satisfied more or less and in Ecstasy, a state of, I fell asleep and when I wake up it’s already light and I look for my loved one and I see my costar has changed with the night, that sleep has transformed her and like poor Franz Kafka I call it a metamorphosis and even though it’s not Gregor Samsa whom I find beside me it sure is another woman: night and kisses and sleep have removed not only her lipstick but the whole of her makeup, the lot: the once perfect eyebrows, the large thick lovely black lashes, the phosphorescent and pale complexion that was so kissable the night before are no more, and, wait a moment, don’t laugh please: you ain’t heard nothing yet, so hold on, I’ll be rocking the boat: there, by my side, between her and me like an abyss of falsyhood, there’s a yellowish object, round more or less and silky in appearance but not in texture, and as I touch it I almost leap out of bed: it’s hairy! I pick it up, he says, in my hands, very cautiously, and hold it up to the morning light to see it better and it is, a last tremolo of strings attached plus a clash of cymbals, yes, a wig: my leading lady becomes the American eagle because she is hairless or, he said, bald, bald, bald, bald! Well, not completely bald, which is even worse because she has a few bits of colorless fuzz here and there, quite disgusting I must say. So there I was, Ionesco Malgré Louis, Silvestre said, in bed with the bald soprano. I must have been thinking this so hard I said it out loud, because she began to stir and then woke up. In the immediately preceding shot I’d left the wig where it was, had lain down again and feigned sleep, and as she wakes up now the first thing she does is to put a hand to her head and in a frenzy she frisks around, she leaps around, looking for her hairpiece everywhere and she finds it and puts it on—but upside down, chico, upside down! Then she gets up, goes to the bathroom, closes the door and turns on the light and when she opens it again everything’s in its place. She looks at me and then she does a double take because she was so worried about losing her hair she forgot I existed and it’s only now she remembers she’s in a posada and with me. She looks at me twice, Silvestre said, to make sure I’m sleeping, but she looks at me from a distance and there I am fast asleep with my eyes half opened, seeing everything: I’m a film camera. She picks up her handbag and her clothes and goes into the bathroom again. When she comes out she’s another woman. Or rather she’s the same woman you and I and everybody else know and who gave me such a hard time last night before she consented to let me be present at her unveiling, at her total striptease, au dépouillement a la Allais.

  All this time I couldn’t contain my laughter and Silvestre had to narrate his Odyssey above my guffaws and now the two of us laughed together. But then he signaled me to stop and said, But don’t you laugh at Barnum, old Bailey, because we’re both partners of Browning in Freaks. What do you mean, I say. Yes siree, you’ve been making love with the Negro nation’s answer to Oliver Hardy. What do you mean, I repeat. Yes, yes. Listen, after I’d left the lie-detector chamber I took that delectable little blonde back to where she once belonged in an early taxi and after I’d seen her safely home I went off toward the sunrise and beyond, where my house is, and as I was passing here, it must have been about 5 o’clock A.M., there was La Estrella walking along the sidewalk up 23rd Street, looking real cross, and I don’t mean her hair but her looks. So I called her and picked her up and took her home but along the way, my friend and lighting cameraman, she told me that a horrible thing happened to her on her way to stardom and she proceeded to tell me that she’d fallen asleep in your camera obscura and that you came back drunk and had tried to sodomize her, and she ended by swearing to me that she’d never never never put a foot inside your house again, and I’m telling you, she was really mad at you. So you see one freak equals another and a farce mirrors a fiasco or fracaso, failure’s saddest form. Did she actually say that? I asked. No, not her but probably Carlos or Ernesto. Come on! Is that what she told you, is that what she said? Well, said Silvestre, she said you tried to bugger her, that’s what she told me but I’m not keeping to the text. I’m giving you a fair film copy instead.

  As I had no more laughter left in my body, I left Silvestre sitting on the bed or the sofa and went to brush my teeth. From the bathroom I asked him which hospital Bustrófedon was in and he told me he was in Antomarchi. I asked him if he was going to see him in the evening and he shook his head and said that at four o’clock he had a date with Ingrid the woman from Bergamo and he thought that today he shouldn’t put off till tomorrow what he should have done yesterday. I smiled but without conviction now and Silvestre told me I shouldn’t smile like that because it wasn’t her body he was after but only that naked soul of hers and that I should also bear in mind her antecedents in film myth: Jean Harlow also wore a wig. Made by Max Factor of Hollywood.

  Sixth session

  Doctor, how do you spell psychiatrist? With or without a p?

  VAE VISITORS

  THE STORY OF A STICK

  (With Some Additional Comments by Mrs. Campbell)

  The Story

  We arrived in Havana one Friday around three in the afternoon. The heat was oppressive. There was a low ceiling of dense gray, or blackish, clouds. As the boat entered the harbor the breeze that had cooled us off during the crossing suddenly died down. My leg was bothering me again and it was very painful going down the gangplank. Mrs. Campbell followed behind me talking the whole damned time and she found everything, but everything, enchanting: the enchanting little city, the enchanting bay, the enchanting avenue facing the enchanting dock. All I knew was that there was a humidity of 90 or 95 percent and that I was sure my leg was going to bother me the whole weekend. It was, of course, Mrs. Campbell’s brilliant idea to come to such a hot and humid island. I told her so as soon as I was on deck and saw the ceiling of rain clouds over the city. She protested, saying they had sworn to her in the travel agency that it was always, but always, spring in Cuba. Spring my aching foot! We were in the Torrid Zone. That’s what I told her and she answered, “Honey, this is the tropics!”

  On the edge of the dock there was this group of enchanting natives playing a guitar and rattling some gourds and shouting infernal noises, the sort of thing that passes for music here. In the background, behind this aboriginal orchestra, there was an open-air tent where they sold the many fruits of the tropical tree of tourism: castanets, brightly painted fans, wooden rattlers, musical sticks, shell necklaces, earthenware pots, hats made of a brittle yellow straw and stuff like that. Mrs. Campbell bought one or two articles of every kind. She was simply enchanted. I told her she should wait till the day we left before making purchases. “Honey,” she said, “they are souvenirs.” She didn’t understand that souvenirs are what you buy when you leave a country. Nor was there any point in explaining. Luckily they were very quick in Customs, which was surprising. They were also very friendly, although they did lay it on a bit thick, if you know what I mean.

  I regretted not bringing the car. What’s the point of going by ferry if you don’t take a car? But Mrs. Campbell thought we would waste too much time learning foreign traffic regulations. Actually she was afraid we would have another accident. Now there was one more argument she could throw in for good measure. “Honey, with your leg in this state you simply cannot drive,” she said. “Let’s get a cab.”

  We waved down a taxi and a group of natives—more than we needed—helped us with our suitcases. Mrs. Campbell was enchanted by the proverbial Latin courtesy. It was useless to tell her that it was a courtesy you also pay for through your proverbial nose. She would always find them wonderful, even before we landed she knew everything would be just wonderful. When all our baggage and the thousand and one other things Mrs. Campbell had just bought were in the taxi, I helped her in, closed the door in keen competition with the driver and went around to the o
ther door because I could get in there more easily. As a rule I get in first and then Mrs. Campbell gets in, because it’s easier for her that way, but this impractical gesture of courtesy which delighted Mrs. Campbell and which she found “very Latin” gave me the chance to make a mistake I will never forget. It was then that I saw the walking stick.

  It wasn’t an ordinary walking stick and this alone should have convinced me not to buy it. It was flashy, meticulously carved and expensive. It’s true that it was made of a rare wood that looked like ebony or something of that sort and that it had been worked with lavish care—exquisite, Mrs. Campbell called it—and translated into dollars it wasn’t really that expensive. All around it there were grotesque carvings of nothing in particular. The stick had a handle shaped like the head of a Negro, male or female—you can never tell with artists—with very ugly features. The whole effect was repulsive. However, I was tempted by it even though I have no taste for knickknacks and I think I would have bought it even if my leg hadn’t been hurting. (Perhaps Mrs. Campbell, when she noticed my curiosity, would have pushed me into buying it.) Needless to say Mrs. Campbell found it beautiful and original and—I have to take a deep breath before I say it—exciting. Women, good God!

  We got to the hotel and checked in, congratulating ourselves that our reservations were in order, and went up to our room and took a shower. Ordered a snack from room service and lay down to take a siesta—when in Rome, etc. . . . No, it’s just that it was too hot and there was too much sun and noise outside, and our room was very clean and comfortable and cool, almost cold, with the air-conditioning. It was a good hotel. It’s true it was expensive, but it was worth it. If the Cubans have learned something from us it’s a feeling for comfort and the Nacional is a very comfortable hotel, and what’s even better, it’s efficient. When we woke up it was already dark and we went out to tour the neighborhood.

  Outside the hotel we found a cab driver who offered to be our guide. He said his name was Raymond something and showed us a faded and dirty ID card to prove it. Then he took us around that stretch of street Cubans call La Rampa, with its shops and neon signs and people walking every which way. It wasn’t too bad. We wanted to see the Tropicana, which is advertised everywhere as “the most fabulous cabaret in the world,” and Mrs. Campbell had made the journey almost especially to go there. To kill time we went to see a movie we wanted to see in Miami and missed. The theater was near the hotel and it was new and air-conditioned.

  We went back to the hotel and changed. Mrs. Campbell insisted I wear my tuxedo. She was going to put on an evening gown. As we were leaving, my leg started hurting again—probably because of the cold air in the theater and the hotel—and I took my walking stick. Mrs. Campbell made no objection. On the contrary, she seemed to find it funny.

  The Tropicana is in a place on the outskirts of town. It is a cabaret almost in the jungle. It has gardens full of trees and climbing plants and fountains and colored lights along all the road leading to it. The cabaret has every right to advertise itself as fabulous physically, but the show consists—like all Latin cabarets, I guess—of half-naked women dancing rumbas and singers shouting their stupid songs and crooners in the style of Bing Crosby, but in Spanish. The national drink of Cuba is the daiquiri, a sort of cocktail with ice and rum, which is very good because it is so hot in Cuba—in the street I mean, because the cabaret had the “typical Cuban air-conditioning” as they call it, which means the North Pole encapsuled in a tropical saloon. There’s a twin cabaret in the open air but it wasn’t functioning that night because they were expecting rain. The Cubans proved good meteorologists. We’d only just begun to eat one of those meals they call international cuisine in Cuba, which consist of things that are too salty or full of fat or fried in oil which they follow with a dessert that is much too sweet, when a shower started pouring down with a greater noise than one of those typical bands at full blast. I say this to give some idea of the violence of the rainfall as there are very few things that make more noise than a Cuban band. For Mrs. Campbell this was the high point of sophisticated savagery: the rain, the music, the food, and she was simply enchanted. Everything would have been fine—or at any rate passable; when we switched to drinking whiskey and soda I began to feel almost at home—but for the fact that this stupid maricón of an emcee of the cabaret, not content with introducing the show to the public, started introducing the public to the show, and it even occurred to this fellow to ask our names—I mean all the Americans who were there—and he started introducing us in some godawful travesty of the English language. Not only did he mix me up with the soup people, which is a common enough mistake and one that doesn’t bother me anymore, but he also introduced me as an international playboy. Mrs. Campbell, of course, was on the verge of ecstasy!