—Isn’t that the case?
—The thing that bothers you about photos is their being still. They don’t move.
He made a muffled sound. What does a sound look like in its muffler? Idiocy of the folk. Muffled noises. Empty vessels make muffled sounds. Sounds to all deaf. Deaf words falling on silk purposes. Till deaf do us part. The early bird catches the first post. You can lead a horse to the water but you can’t make him think. (Though you can make him sink.) Too many cocks spoil the brothel. We need a revolution among proverbs, for God’s sake. Proverbs a la lanterne. Anyone who says a proverb should be shot. Ten sayings that shook the workers. Marx, Marx-Mao, Mao-Mao. It’s a Mao’s world. Soldiers, from the height of this sentence twenty centuries and Big Brother are watching you. Wiscondom of the folk. A phantom is hunting Europe, it is the phantom of Stalin. Crime, how many liberties have been taken in thy name. One must tend socialist man, as one would tend a tree. Ready. Aim. Timmmmmbeeerrrr! A call of duty is a beast forever. Isn’t it true? Isn’t it true? Isn’t it? True.
—ISN’T IT TRUE? I was speaking about life, not about photography, shit! Somebody was hissing at us from the far end of the bar.
—Shut your fucking mouth, Cué shouted.
—Shutvestre Moutherfucker at your service, sir, I said, playing the Cid Conciliador, loud but not loud enough.
—I was speaking about life, viejo.
—Yes, I know, but you shouldn’t shout like that, mon viux.
An unmistakable sign of alcoholissimo. Galvanized French spoken here. Volta turns on his batteries and out comes alcohol. How many amperes has ma mere? Sixte Ampere. French scientist of Spanish stock & exchange. The name was originally written Amperez. His grandfather, Grampere, emigrated to France crossing the Pyrenees on the back of an elephant in search of Liberty Valence (I, chloride ion in HCL eq. Nacl. = Nacional) and died in Paris. He died poor. He died in Pairs. Pompée funebre and attendant gogo circucisms. Ohm y soit qui mal y pense. I honestly think I’m going to be sick. Let foreigners invent! Unamuno said as he watched the Ampersand family crossing the Basque country. Encyclopaedia Tyrannica.
—It’s impossible to speak in this country.
—You weren’t speaking, you were shouting.
—Shit, it’s not the form that matters, but the content. Or so they say.
—Hadn’t we agreed that you weren’t going to talk about politics.
He smiled. He laughed. He became serious again. One two three. He was silent for a moment. The aftereffect of hissing? That’s why snakes are deaf.
—Look, they’ve just given me the solution.
I looked, but I didn’t see any solution. I saw a mojito and seven daiquiri glasses. Six empty and one full.
—I can see two solutions.
—No, Cué said, —there’s only one.
—It’s just that you’re seeing single. Anti-alcoholism.
—There’s only one solution. To my problems. The one and only.
—What is it then?
He came surfing on alcohol waves to whisper in my ear:
—I’m going to the Sierra.
—It’s very early for the late-night and very late for the early-morning. It won’t be open.
—To the sierras not to the Sierra, madre!
—The John Huston film?
—No, damn you, to the Sierra Maestra! I rise up in arms. I’m going to join the guerrilleros.
—What!
—I’m going to join Fffidel.
—Brother, you’re drunk.
—No, I’m being serious. Sure, I’m drunk. Pancho Villa was drunk all the time and look at him. Please do me a favor, don’t turn around to see if Pancho Villa is coming in or not. I mean it seriously. I’m going to the Sierra.
He was ready to leave. I grabbed his sleeve.
—Wait a minute. We have to pay the check first. He shook his arm free impatiently.
—I’ll be right back. I’m going to the can first.
—Are you crazy? It’s like the Foreign Legion.
—What? The john?
—Not the john, dammit. Going to the Sierra, going off to fight. It’s like joining the Foreign Legion.
—Nashional. The Nashional Leshion.
—If you carry on like that you’ll end up like Ronald Colman. First you make a Beau Geste and then you start thinking you’re Othello and finally you die in the play and you die in the movies and you die in real life and so you’re dead, stone dead, dead dead.
“Profoundly dead, fundamentally dead, deadly dead. Dead. Deadfinitely, Terry, terribly, interminably dead.” He was imitating Nicolás Guillén’s Congolese voice. So I started imitating him too: Shall I be Guillén Banguila, Guillén Kasongo, Nicolás Mayombe, Nicolás Guillén de Castro?
—”What an enigma along the waters!”
—Neither an enigma, nor hydromancy nor a hydra nor a sphinx. What Nicolás should do is to go to the registry office.
—What will my name be in that case? Roger Casement? What will my name be, Cassius? Acacia?
—What an enema between two waters. Talking of waters, I have to go and pass them on my way to the pisshouse or shit-house. Both words can and should be applicable. Also the word can.
—You are excusado.
He began once more to make the descent of the north face of the stool he was sitting on, only he didn’t finish the climb. He turned toward me and emitted a long sharp hiss and I thought he was ordering another drink, but then I saw he had raised his index finger horizontally to his vertical lips. Or vice versa?
—Sssssss. 33-33.
—Another cabala?
Now he will tell me that one and one makes two and also eleven and that eleven times two is twenty-two and three times eleven is thirty-three and thirty-three and thirty-three makes sixty-six, which is a perfect number. Arseniostradamus. But the noise continued insistently.
—Ssss. 33-33. A stool pigeon. SIM.
I looked around, I couldn’t see anybody. PerseCuétion mania. Yes, there was a waiter who had changed out of his uniform into civvies and had gone out into the street, toward the canals.
—It’s a Venetian cameriere.
—He’s a 33-33. In disguise. They’re devilishly clever. Classes with the Gestapo and the Berliner Ensemble and all. They’re masters of duplicity and disguisity. It’s incredibly.
I laughed.
—No, old boy. It’d better be a cabala. There’s nobody from the SIM out there.
—SSS. Hide your face.
—SS more likely. Schutzstaffel.
—Hide your face.
—How? I’d rather camouflage myself. I’m an ideal chameleon.
—Leave it to me. I’m the king of disguises and pseudonyms. Actor at large. You know that if I was Stendhal they’d be reading me in 1966? It’s my lucky year.
What had gone wrong? Now he was in the midst of explaining how the year one thousand nine hundred and sixty-six was—but, coño, he’s been a damn long time in the men’s room. I’m going, I went to look for him. He was looking at himself in the mirror, a thing he does at the slightest provocation. I once even caught him looking at himself in a glass. My glass. It’s a good thing that mirrors are public, like toilets. This Narcissus would use up all the quicksilver. I told him so. He replied by quoting Socrates who, like Martí, had something to say about everything. He said that he, Socrates, said that you had to look at yourself in the mirror. If everything’s O.K., then you’re reassured. If it’s not, you can always fix it. What if it’s incurable, like in my case? Socrates doesn’t know. Nor does Cué. As to myself, search me. That’s what I’m doing. Ready to piss. Narcissus Cué is concentrating on his vertical river. But, he says, I’ll tell you something: I look at myself in the mirror not to check whether I’m O.K. or not, but only to check if I am. If I’m still here. That there’s nobody else in my skin. Take good care of your skin, I tell him, it’s your frontispiece, vulgo facade. If I’m still here. Yes, I’m still here. Is it an echo, an eChué, an eCué, Ekué? Hyal
ine cherry pits with a mercurial echo: I am/I am not/I am/I am not/I am. You are here, I tell him. Yes, I’m here, he says, I’m here. But do I exist? In any case I know that it was I who is vomiting and he points to a corner of the bathroom. But was it I who will vomit, and he points again. I take a look and then I look him up and down. Is it/was it/will he? In any case, he looks impeccable. Implacable, Bustrófedon would say if he was able to look at himself in the mirror. And what about Dracula? How does the Divine Cunt D know that he is, that he is alive, that he exists? Vampires can’t see themselves in the mirror. How did old Bela manage to part his hair in the middle? As I reflect on these matters I feel nauseated. Can I be sick? Cué says yes, I can, anyone can as long as he has something to sick up. Even the can can. I go to one of the deodorized cubicles which, as they always do, gives the lie to its name. I urinated once on the ice in the Floridita, a famous bar in Old Havana. Hemingway slept (off a hangover) here. Now the Negro who cleans the bar of the toilets, or is it the bar’s toilets? the negro who cleans the toilebaret there at the Floridita tells me the block of ice is there so there won’t be a bad smell, because urine ferments with the heat which he called la calor instead of el calor. A Hemingwayan, he makes the masculine feminine. I leave my traces in the ice. I look at the yellow and ocher and white toilet bowl which looks like a guitar but is really an Aeolian harp. It sounds when the winds blow. I am not sick. I put my finger down my throat. I can’t be sick, I pull my finger out. Could it be that I don’t have anything to vomit with? Obviously a Sartrean nausea. Metaphysical, metapissical. I go out. I look at myself in the mirror. Is it me who is looking at me out of the mirror? Or is it my alter ego? Walter Ego. Wallace in Wanderlust? Or is it Malice in Underworld. What would Alice Faye make of these faces I’m making? Alice in Yonderland. Alice in underlandia. Aliceing in Vomitland.
—You know what’s happening to you? I ask Arsenio Cuévering, who is wanting to leave the bathroom and can’t find the right hole.
—What?
—You’re tired of growing and growing and getting smaller and smaller and of going up and down and running all over the place, and wherever you go there are all these rabbits giving you orders.
—What rabbits?
He starts looking between my feet.
—Rabbits. The rabbits that talk and consult their watches and organize everything and run everything. The rabbits of the (c)age we live in.
—It’s too early for delirium tremens and too late for the gods, Silvestre, coño! Stop fooling around.
—No, I’m serious, I really mean it.
—And how do you know this?
—Alice told me.
—Adela.
—No, Alice. This is another girl.
But Buster Kuéton is almost a genius at having the last word. He points at the door, which he has finally found without any assistance from me. There is a heart carved on the wood. With a little arrow and initials (G/M) and so on.
—It’s an ad for General Motors, I say, trying to get my shot in first.
—No, he says, shooting straight from the hips. —For love has scratched initials in/ The place of excrement.
XIV
Should I speak to him now or wait till later? Perhaps he would forget his new-found enthusiasm for a guerrillahood. Or had he forgotten it already? Neurosis. Realization of erroneous projects. Addling machine. Shit! he probably will go to the Sierra, Cué’s one heck of a neurotic. I let him pay the cheCué. Are we going to the Sierra now? I go outside and the sea, the basin, is another mirror. He’ll have to stop looking at himself, or he’ll fall in. On the dock there’s a kid throwing flat stones into the smooth water and they hit the surface, skid, jump, hit it again two or three times and finally break the mirror and disappear through the other side, forever. On the wharf a fisherman who has no shadow in that light which Leonardo would call universale was pulling fish out of a launch. He pulled out an enormous ugly fish, a sea monster. A big hunk of fish that would be stinking in a while. What could it be? Cué was leaving the bar. He was talking to himself.
—What’s wrong?
—What am I? A jester? A poor player.
A pool player?
—What’s wrong?
—Nothing, it’s just that we’re out of cash, as Casshius said.
We haven’t a dollar or a nickel or a dime. Not a penny. God-
dammit.
—What?
—We’re ruined. Kaputt. Broke. La pasta è finita. They’ve bled us dry. I had a row with the barman. He wants to make money hand over fist.
—Didn’t you lose it by bending your elbow? Orthopedic metaphors cancel each other.
—Do you have any money?
—Not much.
—As usual.
—As usual.
—Don’t worry about it. You’ve got a bout of the poor man’s inertia. That will soon change.
—What are you? A sooth sayer?
—Que será, será, ‘sta sera. To be sung by Doris Day tonight. Or is it Doris Knight today?
I walk toward the wharf dwarfed by curiosity.
—Arsenio, what’s this fish called?
—How the fuck should I know? You think I’m a naturalist? A Naturalist without Plata. William Henry Cué, alias Arsenio Hudson.
—What kind of fish is that? I ask the fisherman.
—That’s no fish, Cué says. —It’s a catch. Fish are like people, they change their name when they die. You’re Silvestre, you die, and before you know it, you’re a corpse.
The fisherman stares at us both. Could he be Mike Mascarenhas?
—It’s a sturgeon, he says.
—If it’s a surgeon, it could do with some spastic sturgery, Cué says.
The fisherman looks at him. No, it’s not Mike: he’s not violent nor is he fishing for sharks. Nor is this lagoon the Pacific.
—Don’t pay any attention to him, I say to the fisherman. —He’s drunk.
—No, I’m not drunk. I’m a drunkard. I saw it in the mirror darkly.
The fisherman turns back to his hooks, harpoons, lines and rods. Cué looks closely at the fish.
—I know what it is! It’s the Beast. Let’s turn it over and see if it’s got 666 written on it. In forpile, I mean profile, it looks like the beast.
I support him by an arm so he doesn’t lose his balance and fall into the water or among the fishes.
—What do you make of it, Silvestre?
—What do you make that I’d make of it? I say, imitating Cantinflas.
—Don’t you think that this 666 is the remedy for venereal diseases. The magic silver bullet. The stake in the breast of the beast that sleeps by day.
—Vamos, amigo, you are drunko! I said, still putting on my Moviecan accent.
—I’m as drunk as . . .
—Panchovilla.
—No, as drunk as your Muxical namesaké, Silvestre Revueltas, and look what he composed.
—Hear, you mean, not look.
—Hear, look, play “Sensemayá.”
He started humming, drumming on the wooden deck boards with his foot. Senses-may-I La Cuélebra. Nonsensemaja.
—You could do with Eribó’s accompaniment, I said.
—We’d make a late lamentable duo. Even doing a solo I’m lamentable.
True. But I didn’t say so. I can be discreet at times. He stopped dancing, to my relief.
—Don’t you think, Silvestre, honestly, that if you knew that your destiny was to be this fish dead forever, for all eternity, you’d change, you’d give up and you’d try to be something else altogether?
—John Dory Gray got hooked on his own portrait, I said and immediately realized how tactless I’d been. That’s the story of my life: tactless one moment, a model of discretion the next swing of the pendulum. It’s in my nature, the Scorpion and the Proofrog, the joker is Wilde, et cet.
He made a half turn and stalked off. It looked like we are leaving. Would this swamp, this puddle, this imitation roadstead be our Finisterre? But no. H
e walked off to the far end of the dock. He was talking to the boy with the st-o-o-o-nes. They were very close to each other and Cué was fondling him or whispering in his ear, for a joke. Pedagogy. Demagogy. Dictators and mothers and public figures always put on this act. Cué was capable of embracing a shark, as long as there were witnesses around. He’d even fuck a sea monster, given the right audience. They were almost invisible. Night was falling at thirty-two feet per second. Light, twilight, street lights. I looked toward Havana. There was something like a rainbow in the sky. No, they were clouds, tassels of cloud that the sun was still tinting. I couldn’t see the sea from the dock, only this green, blue, gray mud-colored mirror that was getting blacker by the minute. The city, however, seemed to be illuminated by a light that wasn’t artificial and didn’t come from the sun, but which seemed to belong to itself, to emanate from it, as though Havana was a source of light, a radiating mirage, almost a promise against the night that was threatening to surround us. Cué waved to me and I went over. He showed me a stone and said that she had given it to him and it was then that I realized that it wasn’t a boy who had been throwing stones into the sea, but a girl wearing shorts, a little girl who now walked away looking back smiling, almost winking at Cué, who was thanking her in a syrupy voice, and I heard somebody calling through the dark come here Angelita. I was glad and sorry at the same time without knowing why and then immediately I knew. I don’t like boys, but little girls are something else. I would have liked to talk to her, to warm my hands by her light. Now she was walking away with another shadow by her side. Her father, I suppose.
Three Trapped Tigers Page 37
