Finally, and it seems to me that it is of the utmost interest: it is very possible that the parents of Mornard (and with them many other parents, including Stalin’s parents, which is the same as saying his own parents, because Jacques Mornard is Stalin, as is well enough known) will say: What a naughty boy! Lookee here, to do something so very naughty, like for instance murdering this good old man! . . . This is to define bad conscience in common language. It happens because of an illusion or mirage frequent enough in human beings, that the assassin is mistaken for the persona of the assassin and they pass judgment on both of them with all the mythifyings and mystifyings and mythimystifyings or . . . (oh, botheration, I’m getting fagged, or fatigué!) as if imposing simple meanings on a double murder or vice versa. Such a mirage or illusion alters the terms of the equation and the “good consciences” automatically pass over into being bad. By automatically I mean through inertia, or mechanically, or maybe that such a “bad” conscience has no existence without the subjectifying of the conscience of the assassin. That is to say, gossip is the old wives’ gospel.
Speaking of stevedores, I almost forgot to tell you that during the fifteen years I lived in Santiago de Cuba, near the port (I enjoyed it all enormously), I was acquainted with Caridad Mercader, or Cachita, as her neighbors insisted on calling her, the mother of the assassin or disciple par excellence. In her youth, a pretty, young unmarried mother, Cachita, when she gave birth to little Santiago (or Santiaguito), who was then what midwives at that time called a bastard, that is a son without a father, hence the name Mercader, which is clearly much more Cuban than Jugazhvili. Caridad Mercader, cradling this future Saint Iago (Santiago, Iago, Saint—get it?) in his cradle, said or repeated (when she said it more than once) a sentence which I heard and which perhaps I should have taken for a premonition, an act of prescience or prophecy or, who knows, even a gossip of time future. She said (as my sister Luisa would say), this exemplary mother:
—When my son grows up, he will be a big man.
But if Trotsky ne (or better, ci-devant) Bronstein is dead (which seems, after all, possible) and there is nothing to be done about it because what we call the hereafter doesn’t exist or at least it doesn’t exist for those of us who are, as Borges’ cook calls it, in the here-before. As the here-before doesn’t exist for those in the other-world or, to coin a phrase, in the icebox. Mornard, it seems, is still alive or at least so they keep him in the Lecumberri prison, and that is sufficient. What Santiaguito Mercader should do is to ask for paper and ink and start writing his memoirs, because literature is the best sedative that I know. I remember that when I was in Buenos Aires, where I spent sixteen bitter summers, writing was my sweetest consolation. And by writing I mean making literature or, at least in my case, great literature. —V.P.
Lydia Cabrera
(1900— )
THE INITIATE TAKES THE CUP
THAT WILL MAKE HIM A CUPBEARER
He had already forgotten the rounded negative of Baró, the babalósha (chief) of old Cacha (Caridad), his mother from Santiago, when she asked him if she could borrow his nganga to carry out a “work” on the “guampara,” on the day that the powerful chief or orisha arrived bringing with him none other than the terrible and powerfully magical caldron which he kept hidden in a black sack—blako-sako. The spirit (ghoulo) that dwelt in this man had shown that he was good (groovu) because the “moana mundele” (white woman, Cachita Mercarder, in this case) had asked him to do her a favor by protecting her son and the mission (noissima) that he had before him. The old man made haste to carry out that petition (f’avoru) because his nganga also gave its approval (iesseri). The witch doctor calmly authorized him to accomplish the sanctification—”with permission of the pledge”—if such was his desire. Burufutu nmobututu!
It was a nganga in its own right and as the white man was a keen photographer (fotu-fotu fan), he wanted to make a likeness of the noble old man Baró (he remembered that in Santiago he had had a Negro “tata” or Negress) but not before this man had asked permission of Olofin intoning a liturgical song or litu-kanto.
Olofin!
Olofin!
Tendundu kipungulé!
Námí masongo sílanbása!
Silanbáka!
Bika Dioko Bica Ñ diámbe!
Olofin!
O!
LO!
Fi!
—What do the shells (cauris) say, old and noble Baró, asked the white man, troubled. —Is it possible?
The noble and old Baró smiled his African and naturally enigmatic smile.
—Yes (or no)? the troubled white man asked again.
The cauris (shells) speak well of it, said the old and noble Baró. —Olofi is pleased.
—May I take the photo now? asked the troubled white man.
—NO! the old and noble (or noble and old) Baró answered sharply.
—Why not? asked the troubled white man, looking troubled.
He had refused him this favor not because he mistrusted his good intentions nor because he was afraid that his image would fall into the hands of another witch doctor, who as owner of his portrait could cast a spell on him (Ungawa!) or easily put an end to him by sticking pins (it hurts) into it nor because the nganga, quite apart from the profanation, would have been bound and weakened by it. Nor because he was afraid of the troubling witch eye of a camera. Nor because he mistrusted the white man. Nor . . .
—Why not then? asked the white man.
Noble and old and black Baró looked at him with his African eyes and then (also with his African eyes) looked at the camera and at last he spoke:
—This magical machine to make many little Barós in B & W by means of light reflected on sensitized paper, it’s an Asahi Pentax Spotmatic, of course, with a CdS photometric lens, and a 2.8 aperture. Old and noble Baró never look good in photo made with it.
What a difficult situation! There remained (Ol-lef) no other (nozinguelsu) solution (Ungawa!) than to go away (fokkoffo)!
The white man left for Mexico to fulfill his pledge. He was dressed in a white suit, a white shirt with white buttons, a white tie with a white tie pin, a white belt with a white buckle, white socks, white underclothes and white hat and shoes. The clothes of those who “incarnate” “a” “saint”—and have the money to buy themselves a trousseau. He also wore a red handkerchief in his top pocket. Part of the liturgy? No, perhaps it was for adornment or a note of political color to break the monotony of the white. But there is another theory. The man who was dressed entirely in white was called Santiago Mercader and he was preparing himself to kill Bwana Trotsky, a powerful chief with great powers. Perhaps the handkerchief was a sign for some color-blind accomplice (ínfomma).
The white man (Molná mundele) arrived, saw Leon (Simba) Trotsky and killed him. He nailed him on his “coco” (head) with the “guampara” and dispatched him to his “In-Kamba finda ntoto” (icebox). To ensure the accuracy of the final blow, the orishas were always consulted first.
GLOSSARY
Asahi Pentax Spotmatic: commercial term in Latin, English and Japanese. Photographic camera.
Babalao: babalósha in Lucumi.
Babalósha: babalao, also in Lucumi.
Baró: a man’s given name. Also a surname.
Bwana: father or father figure. Equivalent to the Russian word for “little father.”
Guampara: wampara, Swahili. From the Arab word wamp’r. Approx. assegai.
Mensu: opposite of nganga. Roughly, Juju.
Moana mundele: white woman. Acc. Pierre Berger, “tongue which walks pale.”
Nganga: from the dialect of Dahomey, oroko. Amulet.
Olofi: Beloved God. Sometimes. At other times, devil. He is represented normally in his normal position. But occasionally he appears face-downward.
Orisha: from the Bakongo word orisha. Babalao or babalósha.
Tata: nurse, wet nurse. Sometimes, mother.
Lino Novás Calvo
(1905-19??)
HOLD THAT
TYRANT!
Hold that man for me! Fasten him well. Don’t let him go. Hold him right there! So he doesn’t get away. Look what he’s done. This thing (because it’s nailed there, a thing, yes, that one there—not that one! that one!—made of iron, not wood or stone or pumice-stone or plastic but iron, cast-steel some would call it, rooted, riveted, right through the bone between frontal and parietal lobes, close to the occipital bone, not calculated coldly and precisely but skillfully wielded and flailed and nailed to the head of this man—that is to say, of myself—who will soon be done for, soundly and with fury, with a cold rage spurred on by hatred and envy and political enmity, making two men into one single thing by that connective iron which is an extension of his hand, like an inimical gesture or rather the caricature of a gesture or if you insist the gesture itself of stretching out a hand in friendship it seems but in fact made into a homicidal weapon and now both men are one single man, or rather two: executioner and victim, because of that caricatural gesture) which I have on my head is no mantilla high comb. No siree. Lay hold of him. There! So he doesn’t get away. That’s no ornament. What I have on top of my head. Nor is it a ceremonial skullcap. Hold him tight! That’s right. Nor is it some rebellious tuft of hair. It is an ax. Nailed right here. To the skull. As simple as that. Hold that man, for my sake. That’s it!
(Because he remembers, because he’s not able to forget, because he still remembers, because he still hasn’t forgotten, because the past appears to him as a stream of photo images, discontinuous, fragmented but in movement, truth moving at sixteen frames a second, like the track of an old movie shown in a movie house in Luyanó or Lawton-Batista, on the outskirts, or even farther out, where the roof gardens are called rooftops and gardens become tiled roofs and the telephone numbers are no longer an initial letter and then the numbers, where there are not even numbers on the phones because they are not needed, neither initials and then the numbers nor the numbers themselves. Because there are no phones. There is no need of one. All you need is to shout. Instant connection.
In those outskirts where we played soldiers, Allies and Germans, and like Allies and Germans behaved in fact the cab drivers and the drivers of what when time passed were to be called buses but which now are not yet called buses but something else, omnibuses or whatever they are called, and I had to play the baddie when one day the chick appeared at the stand, popping up between two jalopies and saying, between two jalopies, that she was pregnant, and I had to ask her, “So you’re definitely and finally knocked up?” and she answered me, still between two jalopies, that she was, nodding like this. Her head moving in a vertically repeated and disgusting movement, up and down. Like this. Nodding. So, after all, she was. Pregnant. So I know what memory is as I know that the man, that one over there, that man, remembers. But what he remembers is of no importance. To me. Because they are his, this man’s.
Memories. And nothing else. But it’s criminal, nevertheless. This I, Claudius, doing such a thing! Sending this man where he sent him to dispatch him where he dispatched him, sent, dispatch him over there and then like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern rolled in one person leave him alone. Because there was no ransom. For him. Not even a faint hint of a remote intention to ransom him and his cell was a fortress within the fortress that is the Lecumberri prison, so nobody is ever going to come to his rescue. A King Claudius! That’s what he is. This other fellow, this bestial tyrant, this executioner of peoples, this man, Stalin, that’s who. None other. He was. The man who sent him. I know it well. How couldn’t I? It was me who took him in my jalopy and drove him to the Machina docks to catch the last ferry one night when the nona moon was shining. Yessir, that’s the man. Him.
Nonesuch. The killer. The man, because he is a man not a woman nor a child nor a queen in drag but a man, because he goes around dressed as a man even though he has committed the act of a woman, a treachery, and has put certain imaginary projections of the brow on the other man’s head, doing that to an old man and when he was reading his manuscripts to boot. And to have done it behind his back.)
From behind the chair, suddenly, with a movement that was the slow-motion version of a movement, a frozen action, a delayed advance which was the denial of a movement, but a movement after all. The killer, Jacob. Santiago, Iago, Diego. Whatever his name is. This man, that man, the one who stands here. There. Mornard, Mercader or whatever the hell his last name is. That one, James Mollnard. It was he who was my killer. How do I know? Hombre! because we were, the two of us, here in this room, alone, and I was sitting here, in this armchair or rocking chair or whatever chair I am now in slowly drifting into death, in an agony neither sweet nor bitter nor painful nor sad nor happy nor serious but perhaps grave, slowly drifting off slowly toward that place with no name and no number and no phone where they are calling me from, passing away without even having a blind vision like Tamaría did or the motorized death rattles of Ramón Yendia or even the obscene relationship which old Angusola had with his daughter the sweet mulatress Sofonsiba (pretty names, aren’t they? I took them from Faulkner who in turn took them from any encyclopedia or whatever, and we both took it misspellingly from Sophonisba Angusciola, that Italian woman painter in the Renaissance) or anything. Nothing. Just like that. So he was standing there behind me and I was sitting here in front of him and the one (him) stood behind the other (me) and so it was one behind and the other in front, with me doing all the sitting and he doing all the standing, and the reading, the examination or whatever it was would have proceeded perfectly pleasantly if only it hadn’t occurred to this man to jump me, his eyes bulging, and strike me, with whatever he’s done it, on the head, on top of the head, back on top or top of the back, and I here with my eyes (and perhaps also my gray matter underneath my gray hair) bulging as I lay dying while you stand there asking questions or you are standing there asking questions and questions as I die laying asking questions and questions and questions and questions and questions (you) and all the questions being asked of me and none to this man because all you are capable of is stretching out your fists (clenched) to his face, to his eyes (still bulging), beating, browbeating and blackjacking him, without even asking (us) if what is hurting me is also hurting him. Or whatever.
That’s right. Hold him! Don’t let him escape! Don’t let him get away. Lay hold of him and tie and fasten him (which is more or less the same). Do it. Well. Hold. Him! So. He doesn’t get. Away. That’s right! Hold that man, for Marx’s sake! Hold him! Hold or hem him in! Hem him in! Hem! Hem hem!
Alejo Carpentier
(1904-1882)
LOT’S STEPS[59]
To be read in the time it
takes to play the Pavane pour
une infante defunte, at 33 rpm
I
L’importanza de mio compito no me impede de fare molti sbagli. . . . The old man paused perusingly over that sentence infinitively split by an aftertaste of shame, while he thought: “I hate dialogues” and translated it mentally into French to see how it sounded, and sketched on his venerable, venerated, venerating features a smile like a sniff of licorice, perhaps because through the open window, with its shutters recently painted white and now folded back in their frame, across the drawn venetian blinds, the upper part of which could be seen through the flimsy curtains of muslin imported from Antwerp, beside the golden hinges, the curtain cords also of the same yellow-bronze color, their metallic glare contrasting with the dazzling whiteness of the wooden paneling, of shutters and shutterbolts, all made of Canadian walnut wood whitened with cadmium powder dissolved in linseed oil, and over the spacious window seat, adorned with flowerpots which they had sown with Cuban lilies and sunflowers, though he did not see the flowers either in front or behind the snow-white glare and it was because they were not planted in the embrasure of the window but outside in a plot of red tiles that caught the implacable sun, extending beyond the sheltering line of the penthouse roof, in the heat of the day, as Atanasia, the chambermaid, would have ‘said in her Avernal vernacular:
through the luminous cavity there entered unexpected and extravagantly sweet melodies. The music came from beyond the gramophone which regurgitated the tunes of his native land with their melismatic savor, neither fifes nor lutes nor dulcimers, citterns, sistrums, virginals, rebecks, flageolets, zithers or psalteries, but a balalaika, plucked so as to draw from it the sonorities of a Theremin, in the manner of Kiev, “Kievskii Theremina,” which brought with it the memory of the campaigns in the Ukraine. “Je déteste les dialogues,” he said, in French, wondering how it would sound in English. The man, the younger of the two, because one of the men was young and the other old and by the law of comparatives one of them had to be younger than the other who was older and it was this one, the younger one, who was looking at him and laughing now with forced explosions of pleasure, the sentence meant to be a quotation someday. The old man, because there was an old man and if there were two men in that bedroom, carpeted with shaggy weaves from Irkutsk, one of them had to be the older, by weight of years and remembrances, and it was this one who was looking back and then upward, seeing the other foreshortened with the enormous open mouth of his discipular factotum in the visual auris sectio, noted mentally while he was taking notes, lips (two), palate, back teeth, uvula, pharynx, tonsils (or a gap where there were tonsils, because they had been taken out in early tonsillectomy), a politically red tongue and teeth (nearly thirty-two), teeth properly so called in the lower and upper maxillary, incisors, canines, premolars, molars and wisdom teeth and as he was still laughing, with no other motive now than the natural sycophancy of a follower, he saw wrapped in the surrounding humidity the soft palate, raphe, uvula (again), larynx, anterior supports for the soft palate, the tongue again (or was it another tongue?), the tonsular gaps and posterior supports for the palate, and odontologically exhausted he returned to his book. The young man, because it was the younger of the two men who was looking at the opus magnum which the hateful and hated master held in his hands, registered the following things on his watchful, resentful retinas: box, book covers, tile, corner plating, back, backing, ribbing, rosette, letter heading, headband cord, cloth binding, paper binding, stitching of quinternions and sheets of paper, trimming at top, at bottom, trimming at side, illustration, head margin, outside margin, mouth, second cover, cover, and glided a swift glance over the text. Now he passed from the art of bookbinding, the bibliographical references, the nomenclature of books to feel under his waterproof trenchcoat, which he wore conveniently buttoned up despite the winds of a tropical heat wave which were blowing over the altiplano, and over his well-cut jacket he was able to examine with elbow and forearm the sharp, well-honed edge of the ax at the end of its short shaft of polished white teak. He looked away from the book and at that noble white head and thought that he would have to perforate the hair-covered skin, the occipital bone and cut through the meningeal membranes (a. dura mater; b. aracnoid; c. pia mater) to cleave through the cerebrum to pass through the cerebellum and perhaps arrive at the oblong medulla, so that everything depended on the initial force of the blow, on a momentum capable of transforming his homicidal inertia into action. “Tengo un santo horror a los diálogos,” the old man said again, this time in Russian but thinking how it would sound in German. It was this leitmotif sentence, this refrain, this ritornello that moved the young man to strike.
Three Trapped Tigers Page 25
