Three Trapped Tigers

by G. Cabrera Infante

  —But baby Martine ain’t my name.

  —Isn’t it, Cué said very seriously.

  —No, and I don’ like that nickname Annabel.

  —Babel.

  —Whatever it is.

  Magalena speaking:

  —Besides it was just too weird. I swear to God I didn’t understand a word of it.

  What is to be done? Even if we had really been talking Russian and not mirror-Russian, Lenin couldn’t have told us what to do next, still less Chernyshevsky. Henry Ford came to our rescue instead. Cué stepped on the accelerator right down to the floor—or rather to Chez Rine or Rine’s or Ca’Rine. Dom Pyni.

  XVII

  —How!

  —Yatta-heh!

  —Dungawa!

  —Ahallani chá!

  —Good evening, señoritas, Cué said to them, getting in and sitting at the wheel. —Excuse me if I call you señoritas but I don’t know you yet.

  Adrenaling, O-Read corpuscles, O. Reaction Marx-negative. Humors, traces of.

  —Was Rine in?

  —Yep.

  He was doing an imitation of Gary Cooper as he drove off pulling down the brim of an imaginary stetson. He was the White Knight, the savior. Savior Cué.

  —Un año sin verde, I said gravely, copycatting Katy Jurado’s country countralto in High Noon.

  —See low say, said Gary Cuéper in Texican. The wild West dubbed in Spanish, for the audience’s benefit. Self-criticism. Autocritica. He drove on and we rode together.

  —What did Rine say?

  —Opened his mouth.

  —Was it large?

  —Uge.

  —A big boy now, eh?

  —Henormous, said Cué.

  —A rinesaurus, Bustrófedon would say.

  —Who’s this Rine? Beba asked.

  —One of nature’s marvels, Cué said.

  —One of history’s.

  —But is he a man or a woman or what?

  A what, I said.

  —He’s a dwarf who is also a friend, Cué said.

  —A friendly neighborhood Lealliputian.

  —A dwarf? Magalena asked. —He’s not that journalist who’s a friend of Códac?

  —Yep.

  —That’s who it is, I said.

  —He’s no dwarf. He’s the same as you or me.

  —Was, you mean.

  —Whaddya mean?

  —He wasn’t sanforized, Cué said.

  —Say dat again?

  —Dat again.

  —Oh, c’mon!

  —He’s gone and shrunk himself, darling, I said. —He ate some mushrooms. . . .

  —Anatomic mushrooms, Cué cut in.

  —Hallucinatory mushrooms, and before you could say Edward G. Robinson he went psss and deflated. He’s a midget now.

  —The mightiest midget on earth.

  —You’re putting us on! Magalena said. —You don’t expect us to swallow that, do you?

  —If we’ve swallowed it I don’t see why you shouldn’t, Cué said.

  —Women are no better than men, I said.

  —And none the worse for that, Cué said.

  —That’s what I say, I said. —Some of my best lady friends are women.

  They laughed. At last. We laughed.

  —Seriously, who is he? Beba asked.

  —He’s a friend of ours who’s an inventor, Cué said. —Seriously.

  —He used to be called Phryne, but he got old and his Ph dropped off so he couldn’t phiss phroperly and the why turned into an eye. Lack of calcium.

  —So now he’s just Rine though his last name is Leal.

  —But that doesn’t stop him from being a great inventor, I said cutting in on Cué to stop the game going semantic.

  —A phabulous hinventorl Cué said with radiophonic emphasis.

  —Oh, come on! said Magalena. —There aren’t any inventors in Cuba.

  —Not many but they do exist, I said.

  —It was necessary to invent them, Cué said.

  —Everything here comes from someplace else, Magalena said.

  —Quel heurror! Cué said. —Women who have no faith in their country, may their children all be steel born.

  —All that’s needed, I said, —is for you to say, Bwana, white man he invent all thing good. Mistah Kuétz, he dead?

  —No, Silbwana! What we need here is a soupcon of nationalism, Cué said, tuning in his built-in, shit-full public address system. —Look at the Japanese (he pointed to the street). They are no longer to be seen. They have disappeared over the horizon of history. But they’ll come back.

  —Besides, I said, —Rhine is a foreigner.

  —Really? Beba asked. —Where from?

  Snobbery is stronger than the spirit: it blows where it laysteth.

  —Actually he doesn’t have a country, Cué said. —He’s a foreigner everywhere.

  —Yes, I said. —He was born in a United Fruit Company ship chartered by Guatemala that was sailing at fourteen international nautical miles per diem under a Liberian flag when.

  —His father was an Andorran naturalized in San Marino and his mother was Lithuanian but traveling under a Pakistani passport.

  —Boy oh boy, that’s too complicated for me, Magalena said.

  —That’s what an inventor’s life is like, I said.

  —Genius is an infinite capacity for enduring everything, Cué said.

  —Except the unendurable.

  —Take no notice of them, baby, Beba said. —They’re pulling your leg.

  Where’d I heard that phrase before? It must be a historic quote. Wisdom of the cliquetoris. To the unhappy few.

  —Seriously, Cué said and suddenly his voice was serious, —he’s an inventor of genius. It’s possible nothing like it has been seen since the wheel.

  Beba and Magalena laughed noisily, to show they understood. Only they got it by the wrong side of the wheel. By its axle. Axes. Sexa. The wheel of wives? Immoral coils? Or was it the Ananga-Ringa-roses?

  —I’m talking seriously, Cué said.

  —Seriously he’s talking seriously, I said.

  —A great inventor. Extra. Ordinary.

  —But what does he invent?

  —Everything that hasn’t been invented yet.

  —He doesn’t invent anything else because he would consider it pointless. Also edgeless.

  —Someday he’ll get his due, Cué said, —and mothers will name their boys and girls after him.

  —Like Catulle Mendes, for example.

  —Or Newton Medicinelli, who was my physics teacher in another red-incarnation.

  —Or Virgilio Piñera.

  —And La Estrella, ci-devant Rodríguez.

  —What about Erasmito Torres? He’s in the Mazorra asylum now.

  —He a doctor?

  —No, a patient. But he’ll come out with true firsthand evidence on insanity. Titled Mazorrae Encomium.

  —I don’t doubt it. In the end, parodying Grau, there’ll be rines for everyone. It will be a common name.

  —Oh, c’mon! What this Rine invented?

  —Don’t worry, we’ll make you a catalog.

  Cué kept on driving while he pretended to read a long list like a herald unrolling an invisible parchment. His Cuétalog.

  —For example, Rine invented dehydrated water, an invention which solves in one cast of science that will never abolish thirst, the increasingly urgent problem of Arabia. An invention for the UN. There they’ll give him his deserts.

  —Such a simple sample.

  —All you need to do is to drop some pills of water in your djellaba pocket and drive down the desert.

  —Or up. Then you have to put your camel into first gear.

  —You drive and drive and drive and you don’t find any oasis or oleoduct or even a wandering camera unit. Put an end to that stuffy nonsense. You pull out your pill, drop it in a glass, dissolve it in water and presto Chango 1 you have a glass of water. In two seconds flat. Will drink two Bedouins. Or Lawrence and his dune
bugger, if you please. An end to imperialist whitemail, in any case.

  They weren’t amused. They hadn’t understood. What did they want? Real inventions or maybe more wheels? We went on. In incomprehension like this Christianity, Communism and even Cubism were born. All we need is to find our Apaullinaris. Our Saulution.

  —He went on to perfect the distilled water pill. It is guaranteed germproof. No more Veni VD vici!

  —Meanwhile he invents other inventions. The headless and bladeless knife, fr. xmpl. Not a pointless invention, believe me.

  —Or the windproof candle.

  —A brilliant idea.

  —Luminous! Simple too.

  —How simple?

  —Every candle has the words Don’t light! printed on it in red ink.

  —At first he thought of dyeing them red and writing Dynamite on them in black letters, but the idea seemed too flamboyant. Besides there’ll always be the risk of suicides or wayward miners.

  —Juvenile delinquents.

  —Miners, not minors, you mongol aide!

  —What about terrorists?

  —What about horrorists?

  Like Queen Vicaria they weren’t amused.

  —Another invention of genius was his urban condom.

  A few scattered giggles.

  —You cover the city with a huge sheath of inflated nylon.

  —That invention belongs to what will someday be known as the Pneumatic Period in this man’s oeuvre.

  —It will protect cities in the desert or the tropics from the sun, and northern cities from the wind and storms and cold.

  —But not from pollution, I said. —An American wet dream?

  —Also, Cué went on, —you’ll be able to control the rain by zones, because the sheath will have zippers that will open up certain sections and allow the water that has accumulated above them to fall. All the weather stations will have to do is say, Today it will rain in the borough of El Vedado and environs, for example, and then signal to Zipper Code: Showers over El Vedado and environs, please.

  Disappointment among the women. But there’s no stopping us now. Rine, ride, ricci.

  —Another invention of this epic epoch is the rubber road for cars with wheels made of concrete or asphalt, according to taste. An accidental discovery to end all accidents.

  —Think how much drivers in the future will save on tires.

  —This invention has of course one fault. Small but bothersome. The roads may burst. All that’s needed then is an announcement over the radio. Radio Reloj announces: All traffic detoured from Fifth Avenue, which has had a flat. Drivers are requested to go down Third or Seventh, while the road is being blown up. Bleep bleep bleep. More inventions for you in exactly one minute.

  They didn’t say a word.

  —There’s also his invention of rolling cities. Instead of you traveling to them it’s they that come to the traveler. One goes to the Terminal . . .

  —One? Supposing two go?

  —It makes no difference. There’ll be equality. The polis is for the hoi pollute. Polite. Polloi. These two people will stand, then, like a single man on the platform. When is Matanzas City coming? he asks a ticket inspector. Matanzas City should arrive any minute now, according to the schedule. One hears another voice behind, When does Camagüey get in? Oh, there’s been a slight delay in Camagüey. (Over the loudspeakers) Attention! Passengers to Pinar de Río! The city of Pinar de Río is just arriving at platform number three. Attention! Passengers for Pinar de Río please hurry! Some passengers pick up their baggage and step off the platform onto the city. All abroad!

  Nothing nothing nothing.

  —There are other less ambitious little inventions.

  —Poor but honest.

  —Like the car which doesn’t need gas. It’s worked by gravity. All you need to do is to build roads that slope downward. Shell will discover that its pearl is only a cultured one.

  Nothing but nothing.

  —Also in the field of public constructions the masterly rolling sidewalks should be mentioned.

  —With three-speed gears.

  —There are three endless rolling sidewalks and the first one goes at the speed of people in a hurry (this can be adjusted to the character, economy and geography of the different cities), the middle speed for people who are just strolling or who want to arrive late for an appointment or for tourists, and finally the inside sidewalk, which goes very slowly, for people who want to go window-shopping, or talk with friends, or pay compliments to a girl in a window.

  —This inside walk will sometimes have benches for the old and for invalids and war veterans. You are also obliged to give up your seats to pregnant women. Or both.

  Nothing but nothing but nothing.

  —Or his erasable magnetic film.

  —Or the music typewriter.

  —Just imagine what use Mozart could have made of it.

  —There will be stereostenographers, tachymelos or melographers. Perhaps they could even do some typedancing.

  —Tchaikovsky would have been able to sit a male secretary on his knee and at the same time score his Sexth Symphony.

  —Better still is the new system of writing music which will make us all musically literate.

  —It is such a revolutionary invention that it has already been officially banned in all the conservatories. There’s an agreement signed in Geneva to prevent its use. The same thing happened with his sexophone, which offsprang from the rape of a virginal by some viola d’amore.

  —It is simplicity itself, like everything Rine does : Simple Fidelis! You simply write on the score (and you don’t need ruled paper either) Tararara tararari or Um-pa-pa-pa or Nini nini nini, depending on the character of the music. You make notes in the margin: nadagio/ calento/ con frio/ all egro/ nosale/ maestoso paffuto/ trompetuoso. This is the only concession to the traditional notation. Pom-pom-pom-pom, Pa-pa-pa-paaá, for example, will be the opening of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, which Rine has already transcribed completely in his system. The sol-fa notation, of course, will be called the Humming Way.

  Our nadaing that art in nadity nada by thy name. A last attempt. A lost intent.

  —His latest invention, the Definitive, the ultimate counter-weapon, is an anti-A -H or -Cobalt bomb.

  —These bombs, little darlings, split the atom. Rine’s anti-bomb puts it together again.

  —As the bomb is dropped an automatic device fires off the anti-bomb which integrates at the same speed and with equal intensity as the other disintegrates, so that the enemy bomb ends up by being reduced to a piece of scrap uranium falling out of the sky. It can damage a building, make a pothole in the road, or kill a mockingbird.

  —Like a tile falling off a roof.

  —You will read in the papers the next day: War News. Yesterday a crow was hit by an atomic bomb dropped by the enemy of our heroic motherland. He was killed but not scared. These heartless criminals will soon pay for their misdeeds. Our army continues to execute victoriously its strategic retreat. General Confusion, from Hindquarters.

  —Buggle, blow Booze and Soda.

  —But total silence ensued us. It felt like an ad for Rolls-Royce because I could hear my heart ticking on the dashboard. Nobody said a word. Except Arsenio Cué, who bellowed as he made a sharp turn to avoid running down a fat man. The heavy pedestrian suddenly became light with fright and made the sidewalk or unmade the street with a flying leap and balanced on the curb, doing a hop, skip and jump, spinning around and somersaulting like a night-ropewalker. I heard a cascade of laughter, a single long torrent of laughter, more Cubane than urbane. Our she-fellow-travelers were cracking up and splitting their sides and pointing amazedly or amusedly at the near-miss—or rather mister. They went on laughing for several blocks. Cuésullus sulked: nothing’s more silly than a silly laugh.

  We wanted to sail them into Johnny’s or Yonis, you can say it either way in Havanaise, between their gales of laughter and the hot wind outside—without much success. Now, once inside,
cooled off by the bitter chill or killed off by the bitter cool of the air-conditioning sipping an alexander, a daiquiri, a manhattan and a cuba libre, a drink for each, we tried grinding them in our fun machine. For them, it was quite clear, the result was more pus than fun or more fuss than pun. But we went on with joking and choking, washing our dirty jokes in public. What the hell for? Maybe because Arsenio and I were getting high on it. Or because there was still a wake of alcohol in our resentful blood vessels. Or else it just made us happy this facility, the facile felicity, this phalluscity with which we’d carried them off, kiddingnapping them: the ease of this Rape of the Sapphines, our elephantine levity, the Eliphas Levitation we’d accomplished, plus my idea that tumescence is the opposite of the Fall. At least I think that’s what I was thinking. I don’t know if Arsenio Cué felt it or not but right now we both decided at the same time, with tacit tactless tactics, to be Gallagher and Shean for them, Gallastello/Abbottshean Gallaurel and Costardy & Shabbot and Haurelello/Cabbott Shardy and Custer pie for them—it was our Custard Last Stanceley. Bugle, blow Booth and Sadist. We began with a Bu(stro)ffoonery, of course, preposthumous but never too late for this master, the Maestrophodon, my Maelstromedon, the Ground Maestro.

  —Do you know the story of the time when Silvestre Here was found naked in a park?

  A good beginning. Female interest in nudity for its own sake, not for mine. Lewd of the rings. Envy of the pen. Castrati complot. Latins are ludic loafers.

  —Please, Cué, couldn’t you tell us something else. My voice had a false blush in it.

  Their Cuériosity aroused.

  —Tell us, Cué.

  The thing is the play.

  —Please tell us.

  —O.K.

  —Please, Cué, don’t.

  —Eribó and Here (giggles) Bustrófedon (giggles) and Eribó and I were in this park . . .

  —Cué!

  —Here and Eribó (giggles) were . . .

  —If you’re going to tell it you might at least tell it properly. Eribó wasn’t there.

  —How can I tell a naked truth properly? (Giggles) We were Here and . . . You’re quite right (giggles), Eribó wasn’t.

  —You know that’s not possible.