Three Trapped Tigers

by G. Cabrera Infante

  Bustrófedon really didn’t write anything more, if we discount the memoirs he left under the bed with a chamberpot as paperweight. Silvestre made me a present of them and here they are without so much as a comma or colon missing. I believe that to a certain extent (as S. would say) they are important.

  SOME REVELATIONS

  A joke? And what else was the life of Bustrófedon if not that? A joke? A joke within a joke? In that case, gentlemen, it’s a grave matter. And the problems he set Silvestre, driving him to the point of despair (Silvestre S. De Spair, who told him You are the Capablanca of invisible writing. How come? asked Bustrófedon. Did he play on an all-white board with chessmen made of ivory towers? No, said Rine laughing, instead of square 64 he preferred 69! Not at all, serious Silvestre answered seriously because he couldn’t allow a joke when he was talking gravely or vied versa. He wanted to make the so-called game-science more difficult because it seemed to him too much a game and too little a science or vice versatz, and Bustro, who said, It’s just that I’m a Capablanca who watches the chessmen playing by themselves: I write with sympathetic ink), and the subsequent delight of Bust, who seemed like a jockey in a steeplechase race (words which bugged this Eddie Arcaro of the dictionary, as did phrases like the desert of the Sahara and Fujiyama mountain or the city of Leningrad, which always bugged him like crazy whenever someone said them, except when he said them himself which seemed to relieve him), or rather: he himself was the master/designer of literary obstacles and he proposed then a literature in which the words would mean exactly what the whim of the author decided, so that all he needed to do was to state in a prologue at the beginning that whenever he wrote night one should read day or when he said black one should assume he meant red or blue or colorless or white and if he stated that a certain character was a woman the reader should understand man by it and after the book had been written he would suppress the prologue (at this point Silvestre always did a running jump: salto alto, Sp.) before publishing it or he would stick other letters on the typewriter at random (this phrase typewriter at random would delight B. if he read it, I’m quite certain) and then type out these words: skw flowjns woda. ¿2/ ;qwertyuiop?% ==+Ñ-***”1££&$) (“‘ !!!!!¿¿¿¿Z or long for a book written entirely back to front, so that the last word became the first and vice verses, and now that I know that Bus has taken a trip to the other world, to his opposite, to his negative, to his anti-self, to the other side of the mirror, I think that he will read this page as he’d always have wanted to: thus:

  And his Geometrics of the Spirit in which a spiral terminating in an arrow is the sign for a geometric nightmare, in many arrows in vectors which always bring one back to the center (risotorna vincitore, B would sing), compulsively-convulsively, like a lifer, while the line of the spiral retreats continually under one’s feet, like a helix? And his sign for geometric happiness: a circle, a glossy sphere, or better still: a crystal ball, and his sign for serene stupidity: a square, and for primitive and mobile solidity (a geometrical rhinoceros, he called it): a trapezium, and for obsession: a simple spiral, and for neurosis: a double spiral, and for

  brevity: a period

  continuity: a line

  origins: an ovoid

  fidelity: an ellipse

  psychosis: excentric circles?

  And his proposal that first thing in the morning Unesco should be renamed Ionesco? President: Marx, Groucho. Secretary General: Raymond Queneau. Members: Harpo Marx (or his statue), W. C. Fields, Dick Tracy and the vis-president of Viscose, Mr. L. Aztec. And the tragicomedy of AA, as he called it, when Antonin Artaud met his apotheosis in Mexico, which was at Tenhampa or at Guadalajara-de-Noche and the band of mock-mariachis greeted every customer in turn and were really living it up, and one of the group, Fernandel Toro, said to the guitarist, The gentleman here’s the great French poet Antonin Artaud, and when the mariachero went back to his group, Fernandel shouted out: Hermano, let’s give him one from Jalisco! and the Mexican, pulling down the brim of his sombrero and smoothing his enormous Zapata mustaches, screamed at the top of his voice over the uproar and downroar, and all the drunk tequila, Damas y caballeros, we have the pleasure of dedicating our next number to the great French poet who is here among us tonite, honoring us with his presence: EL GRAN TOTONÁN TOTÓ!, and he Bustrofinished by saying that Groucho Marx and Quevedo and Perelman were so much alike they had to be different people! Ampersend?

  THE PRO-AND-CON NAMES

  Bally Dancers

  Alicia Marxova Ruth de Loukin-Glass

  Alice Wonderlova Sue-Anne Lake

  Marx Platonoff La Passionaria

  Vaslav Vijinsky Jack d’Angoisse

  Nishinski Hilda Capo

  Jules Supermansky Joe Lemon

  Isadore Drunkasse Shirt Villeya

  Adella Mort Ussrlanova

  Margo Fountainpen La Boyassianna

  Pat Dedeux Rudolf Vagentina

  Authors of Poperas

  Strauss & Strauss & Strauss David Ricardo Strauss

  Rodgers & Hart George Gehrswing

  Rodgers & Hammerstein Call Porter!

  Rodgers & Rodgers Oftenback

  Rodgers & Trigger Jerome Kern Jerome

  Leopold & Loeb RCA Victor Herbert

  Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Offend Bach

  Boyassian & Mammassian Irving West-Berlin

  France Les Halles Silver & Gullivant

  Vincent Yahooman Tinkers & Evers (& Chance)

  Copywrighters

  True Person Art Buchenwald

  Water Lilliput Joseph Awfulsop

  James Reston Peace Jack MacRaker

  Theo Ligarchy Shirley Boyassian

  Nails Hardener Anna Coluthon

  Herbal Mathé A. Pancho Lyse

  Daily Carnage Dick Takenaback

  Urban Clearway Hellin Laurelsong

  Bruce Lipps Waltered Winches

  Barry Kaids Cliff Anger

  Famous In Books (or In Famous Books)

  Crime and Puns, by Bustrofedor Dostowhiskey

  Under the Lorry, by Malcolm Volcano

  Comfort of the Season, by Gore Vidal Sassoon

  In Caldo Brodo, by Truman Capone

  Against Impenetration, by Su Sanstag

  The Company She Peeps, by Merrimac Arty

  Mutter Carajo!, by Bert Oldbitch

  By Left Possessed, by Lord Brussell

  Ruined Vision, by Stephen Spent

  Troubles with My Cant, by Green Grams

  Philosuffers

  Aristocrates Des Carter

  Empiricles S. Boyassian-Mamassian

  Antipaster Lysergicus

  Presocrates Sophocrates

  Ludwig Offerbach Duns Scotlandiard

  Luftwaffe Feuer-Bang Lao Tse-tung

  Marxcuse Phlato

  Ortega and Gasset Abelard & Helloise

  Julius Marx Platinus

  Giordano Brulé Unomono

  Musickians

  Sans-Sense Laurence de Rabbia

  Wanter Pistol Yehudi Minuet

  Artur Blitz Ladonna Oldsmobile

  Ephrem Timbalist Doremy Fazoll

  Igor Stavisky Siberius

  Handels Messiaens Morris Rebel

  Rhythmic Kossackov Wonderland Dowski

  Demeter Pumpkin S. B. Mamasian

  Aaron Copuland Hector Bidet

  Cecilia Chorus van Antwerp Proto Iliac Chachaicovski

  Arstits

  Whistler Silver Dalli

  Singer Edgas

  Remembrandt Mizarro

  Le Murillo Purillo

  El Grotto Uccillo

  Picabbio Sophonisba Angusciola

  Lenin Riefenstahlin Gioya

  Vincent Bang Ugh Uffizi

  Bob Motheriswell Sargent

  Anti Warhole & Constable

  Immentionables

  Menasha Troy (in Canada) Sean Connery (in France)

  Shiram Boyasian Mamasian Shiram Boyasian Mamasian

  (in Cuba) (in Cuba)

  Cuca Valiente (in Venezuela
) Lucille Ball (in Harvard)

  Concha Espina (in Uruguay) Ernest K. Gann (in Spain,

  Chao Ping-ah (in Cuba) Cuba, Mexico and

  Nora Condom (in Cuba, Spain Argentina)

  and the USSR) Dmitri Tiomkin (in Tangle-

  Walter Piston (in the USSR) wood)

  W. C. Fields (in the USA) Febo Bergaza (in Mexico)

  Lev Davidovitch Bronstein Giovanni Verga (in Mexico)

  (in the USSR) and Shiram Boyasian

  Ervana Cacanova (in Ancient Mamasian (in Cuba)

  Rome)

  And what he and Silvestre called The Blaster Cast, with a thousand irrepeatable & unrecallable names? Ah : BUT NO: stop: basta: whoa: it’s tooo much. And, my God, to think that all this, all this (and seven too) has died up there in the opera, operating theater, where he deceased to exist (and to be or not to be and to think, and to cast a shadow?), the Great Totonán Totó, Dalai; the Mostest, and that the doctor, that vampire, would never have the satisfaction of knowing what would happen when he gave back what was left of B. to the others, to the vultures or next of kind, to the century, like a Doctor Frankenstein in reverse. But (but: this word, but, always ends by coming in between) later during the autopsy or butchery (because they even laid him out on a marble slab), in the camera obscura of revelations, the doctor knew there that he had his practical reasons, that his pedantic prognosis (or proboscis) was certain and that was the only thing Oldfucker was sure of. As for me, an anonymous scribe of latterday hieroglyphs, I could tell you something else, I could tell you this one last thing : he opened Him up (I no longer have even the and Up Him Closed and Him at looked and )name His say to right he didn’t see Him: he saw nothing—because he never knew, but a just was table dissecting the on was there all that, never sewing machine and an umbrella full stop

  Eighth session

  I dreamed that I was an earthworm, pink all over, and that I was going to visit my mother in her house on Calle Empedrado and I was going up the stairs, but I was walking upright, on my feet like I always walk, and nobody seemed surprised. I went up the stairs and although it was daytime it was very dark and on one of the landings there was a black worm who raped me. Afterward I was on a stone in the middle of a river with my little worms and they were all pink like me, except for one little worm who had black spots and who was also the one most attached to me. I gave him a shove with my tail but he came back and I kept on shoving him. I wanted to keep him away from the other worms and he looked at me with such a sad little face, but the more unhappy he looked the more angry I became. Suddenly I gave him a big shove and I pushed him into the water.

  I HEARD HER SING

  Bustrófedon died yesterday, or is it today?

  Is life a concentric chaos? I don’t know, all I know is my life was a nocturnal chaos with a single center that was Las Vegas and in the center of the center there was a glass of rum and water or rum and ice or rum and soda and that’s where I was from twelve o’clock on, and I turned up just as the first show was finishing and the emcee was thanking his charming and wonderful audience for coming and inviting them to stay for the third and last show of the night and the band was striking up its theme song with a lot of noise and nostalgia, like a circus brass band but changing from the umpa-pa to the two-four or six-eight beat of a charanga trying out a melody: the noise of a ragtime band coming on like a Kostelanetz string orchestra, something which depresses me even more than knowing I’m already talking like Cué and Eribó and all the other six million soloists of this island called Tuba and while I’m rubbing the glass in my hands and digressing that sober little man who sits inside me and speaks so low nobody but me can hear him tells me I’m losing my footing and as that genie of the bottle I am has just said very softly now Cuba, and Hey presto! there she was greeting me, popping out of nowhere to say, Hi there honey and at the same time giving me a kiss just there where the cheek meets the neck and I looked in the mirror, mirror on the wall (of bottles) and I saw Cuba, every inch of her, bigger and more beautiful and sexier than ever and she was smiling at me so I turned around and put my arm around her waist, And how’re you Cuba baby, I said and I kissed her and she kissed me back and said, Be-au-ti-ful, and I didn’t know if she was okaying the kisses she was testing with that sex sense she carries on the tip of her tongue or if she was extolling her soul, as Alex Bayer would say, because her body sure didn’t need any padding. Or maybe she was simply glowing over the evening and our chance meeting.

  I left the bar and we went over to a table but first she borrowed some change from me for the jukebox which was already playing none other than her “Sad Encounter” which is her theme song just as this music-killing band’s is “The Music Goes Round ‘n’ Round,” and we sat down. What are you doing here so early, I asked and she said, Didn’t you know dear I’m singing now in the Mil Novecientos and I’m their star dear and I don’t care what you say what matters is what they pay me and I’m sick and tired of the Sierra, and here I’m at the center of everything and I can get away to the San Yon or the Gruta or where I feel like between shows and that’s what I’m doing now, capeesh? Sure I understand, you are the center of my chaos now Cuba I was thinking but I didn’t say it though she knew what I meant because I was fondling her tits right there in the ultraviolet darkness where shirts and blouses turn into the shrouds of a pale ghost and faces turn a deep purple or can’t be seen at all or else they look like wax it depends on their complexion or race or what drinks and where people slip away from one table to another and you see them crossing the dance floor deserted now and being first in one place and then another and doing the same thing in both, in other words making love, or matarse which means making death, a much better word because they were lethally exciting themselves to death and these gauche movements from one table to another changing company but not jobs made me think we were in a fish bowl, all of us, including me, though I thought, believed, allowed myself the luxury of thinking it was the others who were the fish in the bowl and suddenly we were all fish so I decided to drown myself, plunging into Cuba’s cleavage, her melons coming out on their own from her blouse to surface to the open market, diving under her armpits left unshaved a la Silvana Mangano I think or a la Sofia Loren or some other star of the Italian screen, swimming, ducking under, totally immersed in her and suddenly I thought I was the Captain Cousteau of night waters.

  And then I raised my face and saw an enormous fish, a galleon navigating underwater, a submarine of flesh that stopped short of colliding with my table and sending it sinking to the surface. Hey there baby said a voice deep and bass and shipwrecked as my own. It was La Estrella and I remembered when Vítor Perla, may he rest in peace, no, no, he’s not dead but the doctor ordered him to go to bed early or he’d never get up again, I remembered that he knew what he was saying when he said that La Estrella was the Black Whale and I thought that one night she must have appeared to him just as she did to me now, and I said, High Estrella, and I don’t know if it slipped out or if I just said it, the fact was she began lurching and swaying and she placed one of her hands like a black tablecloth on my table and recovered her balance again and said to me, as she always does, La, La La and for a moment I thought she was just warming up the tuba of her throat but she was correcting me so I said always willing to oblige, Yes La Estrella and she let out such a bellow of laughter it stopped the people in mid-table and I think it even froze the jukebox in mid-turntable and when she got tired of laughing she went off and I have to say that neither she nor Cuba had exchanged so much as a word because they weren’t on speaking terms, I suppose because a singer who sings without music never speaks to someone whose singing is all music or more music backing that is than singing and with apologies to her friends who are also my friends Cuba reminds me of Olga Guillotine, who is the favorite singer of all those people who like artificial flowers and satin dresses and nylon-covered furniture: the fact is I like Cuba for other reasons than her voice anything but her voice definitely not her voice but for visual reasons,
for the eye has reasons that the ear never knows, for reasons that not only can be seen but can be touched and smelled and tested, something that can’t be done with a voice or perhaps only with one voice, with the voice of La Estrella, which is the voice that nature jokingly preserves in the excrescence of its pupa of flesh and fat and water. Am I still being unfair, Alex Bayer, alias Alexis Smith?