by Carlos Eire
We couldn’t hide our excitement from one another when Eugenio showed up on his bike, sweating and grinning, and pulled the giant petardo out of his pocket. We carefully arranged the explosive device under the can so that only the wick was sticking out. Calling it a mere “firecracker” would be an insult. It could have been a stick of dynamite, for all I know.
“I bet this can will go into outer space.”
“Yeah, the thrust from the explosion should send that can past the clouds.”
“What if the lizard actually goes into orbit?”
“That would be so great.”
“How long do you think he’ll last in space?”
Our reluctant astronaut squirmed under the white surgical tape we had used to bind him to his capsule. So green, so very green, that beautiful Cuban chameleon. The kind of green you see on tropical plants, and on new spring foliage in northern latitudes, but not on wildlife.
Since it was his explosive, Eugenio lit the fuse. Then we all backed up about six feet and waited for liftoff.
It was a long fuse. We stood there for what seemed an eternity, watching the sparks wend their way down the fuse towards the bottom of the can and the explosive under it.
BANG!
A blinding flash, a cloud of smoke. Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh, whoosh!
“What happened?”
“Hey, where’s the can?”
“It blew up, stupid.”
“What do you mean?”
“It blew up. Completely destroyed. Didn’t you feel and hear those pieces flying by?”
“I saw it explode into a million pieces, I really did,” said my brother Tony. “And one of those pieces of metal nicked my ear. Here, look: blood!” Sure enough, there was a little bit of blood trickling down the edge of Tony’s left ear. We all inspected ourselves for damage. Everyone was intact. Except the lizard of course.
“Hey, do you think we might be able to find pieces of the lizard?” I asked.
“No, stupid, it’s gone, all gone. Too soft to survive.”
“Let’s see if we can find pieces of the can,” said Manuel.
“Yeah, maybe we’ll find lizard guts on one of them,” added Rafael.
We fanned out over a fifty-yard radius, leaving the charred epicenter behind. We did manage to find a few pieces of shrapnel, but none was very large. No trace of the lizard, or the tape. Our spaceship and astronaut had gone out of this world, yes, but not the way we expected.
We laughed and laughed like the idiots we were. Thinking back, I now realize it was a miracle that we weren’t hurt by the flying shrapnel. Every mother’s worst fear, metal embedded in her boy’s eye. Whoosh! That’s as close as we came to harm, an odd flurry of whispers following the explosion.
We were graced that day.
Fools. None of us did well in physics later. I thought then, and I still think now, that all so-called laws of physics are random acts, directly willed by God. The so-called laws could change any instant, as they did when that can blew up in our faces.
That’s what could happen when we were unsupervised, which was most of the time. But every now and then my dad would want to join in the fun, and when he did we were more cautious. Often, when he joined us we would go to a park about two blocks from our house, on Fifth Avenue—Quinta Avenida—the nicest street in Miramar.
It was a grand old park that stretched across both sides of the avenue and it was full of ancient ficus trees that had trunks as big as houses. Ficus trees have these tendrils that grow from their branches, and when they reach the ground, they take root and swell, ever so slowly, and another trunk begins to form. Trunk upon trunk, ficus trees build themselves out. Sometimes a single tree is a forest of trunks, some bundled together, others standing at various distances from the center. They were so much fun to climb and to fill with firecrackers. So many nooks and crannies. So many lizards to blow up.
This park also had some sort of enormous marble gazebo, or band shell, held up by thick Corinthian columns. We loved to explode firecrackers in the glorieta, as we called the giant gazebo. The acoustics of the dome made it sound as if we’d set off an atomic bomb, or so we thought. It thundered and reverberated, and filled us with undiluted joy.
Then there was the smell of the gunpowder. The petardos gave off the most intoxicating fumes. But even the smallest firecrackers were worth smelling. We would all run over to the spot where our firecrackers had exploded and inhale deeply.
How I wished I could smell the gunpowder when real bombs went off at night. Imagine what a punch a bundle of dynamite can pack! More often than not, they were far off in the distance, but every now and then we got lucky and one would be close enough to rattle our window shutters.
Quite a few bombs went off in Havana those last few years of Batista’s regime.
To this day, as I am drifting to sleep I often expect to hear a bomb or two going off in the distance. It was an almost comforting sound, a lullaby of sorts. And if it was a bomb followed by a shoot-out, then it was even more oddly soothing.
You knew, at least, that the world hadn’t changed.
Sometimes you would learn later where the bomb had gone off, what damage had been done, or whether any people had died. The papers made sure to get photographs of those killed or maimed. Sometimes you never found out anything at all. When so many bombs are going off all the time, it’s hard to keep track. Hard to care, too, unless one happens to go off next to you.
Nothing like that ever happened to us, however. Tough to say this, but I was kind of disappointed that I was never near one of these bombs, or that we didn’t know anyone who had been blown up by one.
I loved explosions. I loved them in war movies. I loved them off in the distance as I went to sleep. I loved them even more close up when we set off firecrackers.
I loved the sound of the match head on the rough side of the matchbox, the flare: so suddenly there. I loved the sight and the phosphorus smell of the burning match as it approached the fuse on the firecracker, as it transferred that living flame to it. And I loved the sight and smell of the fuse as it came alive and was consumed, eaten by time and fire.
Such a perfect way of thinking about those fuses, and also life. You begin at one end, and as you make your way forward, point by infinitesimal point, you give off sparks. And what you leave behind is charred, consumed, transformed. But that glorious voyage towards the end: poets never grow weary of trying to describe it. The end, or telos, as Aristotle or Aquinas would tell you, is the very reason for existence, the purpose of anything that exists. Our telos as humans, yours and mine, is to abide with God for eternity. The sparks on our way there, large and small, call them love. The telos of a fuse on a firecracker is a nice explosion. The sparks on the way there, call them love too.
On a really good day, I will fight to the death with anyone who tries to tell me that those sparks are not also love, fight with my bare hands or the jawbone of an ass or a broken stump of a sword. Metaphors matter to me, especially perfect ones.
How I loved that instant when the fuse disappeared altogether, when its sparks were swallowed whole by the blood red firecracker. You knew what would happen next, but each and every time it was such a great surprise.
Absolute silence, for the briefest little pinpoint of time.
BANG!
Good ones shake you to the core, sweep over all your senses. Sight, sound, smell, taste, even touch. Yes, touch too: a good blast can be felt all over one’s body.
A flash of light, one of those rare moments when raw energy makes itself visible, the very stuff of life, blinding the eyes to all else.
A roar, deafening, that suddenly cancels out all other sound.
Wave upon wave of particles of the exploding object filling the air, fumes that fill your nose and cancel out all other scents, even those of the sweetest flower.
Those same particles invading your tongue, vanquishing all other flavors, melding with your own spit.
And those shock waves,
the air itself moving, our invisible ocean of gas ripped from top to bottom, just like the veil of the Temple in Jerusalem when Jesus died on the cross, the air pulsating with energy that seeps into your very skin, your pores, your nerves, and ultimately, your brain, making every other sensation vanish, making you say “Yes, I live.” Sometimes the shock waves bombarding your skin force you to say “God.”
Of course, firecrackers seem a lot less lyrical or cosmic when they blow up in your hand. At least while you’re feeling the pain. I should know; it happened to me.
There we were at the park with my dad one day, the whole bunch of us, setting off firecrackers in the glorieta. This time, my mom was there too. She was sitting on a park bench under the shade of a giant ficus tree, watching her husband and her boys play with firecrackers.
On this day we had a few duds that wouldn’t explode. Duds. Now, there’s an English word so perfect that it almost makes up for the lameness of firecracker.
We’d watch that fuse disappear into the firecracker, and then nothing would happen. The firecracker would just sit there, right where we had put it, totally dead. Talk about frustration!
Yet even these insulting, faithless ones served a purpose. After waiting a minute or so, we would take the duds, slice them open, and light the gunpowder with a match. Whoosh! A flash rather than an explosion. Second best, but so nice. And such a great smell too.
It was probably my twentieth firecracker of the day. I lit it inside the glorieta, at the base of one of its columns. We watched the fuse burn, as always, with great eagerness. This one seemed to burn more quickly than most, but that might have been an optical illusion, or a trick my memory is playing on me. Dud. The fuse vanished, the last spark flew, and nothing. Zilch. I was mad. It was my third or fourth dud that day. I thought I had waited long enough, but as I reached for the firecracker my dad and my brother and my friends shouted at me in unison.
“No, not yet!”
“Wait! Wait!”
“Hey, no!”
“Don’t, don’t!”
Stupid dud. I was so angry, I ignored their warnings, grabbed the firecracker with my right hand, and made a fist over it, trying to crush it.
BANG!
It was so pretty. The blast turned my hand into light itself for an instant. It seemed totally aglow, ever so briefly. Bursts of light and showers of sparks shot out from the narrow gaps between my fingers. It looked just like the drawings in Superman comics when the Man of Steel crushed bombs with his bare hands. The thrill hovered ever so delicately and briefly.
Then the pain shoved the thrill aside, rudely, and conquered my brain. My hand was nothing but pain. It was burning, throbbing, seared by a pain beyond all thresholds. I kept my fist closed tightly, and held my right wrist with my left hand, as if trying to choke off the pain. I stood there, frozen, in shock.
A few images managed to embed themselves in my memory, snapshots of sorts.
My dad, brother, and friends rushing towards me.
My dad saying “I told you not to grab it.”
Someone else saying “I told you to drop it.”
My body refusing to sit down next to my mom at her park bench.
My body yielding to her voice.
My mom, sitting next to me, trying to open my fist.
My fist, refusing to open. My mouth letting out a strange sound, some kind of cry I didn’t recognize as my own. It was more like a very loud whimper.
My fist letting go, opening, yielding to my mom’s voice.
The sight of my hand. It was black and red, all over. Like some odd mixture of coal and raw meat. I remember feeling relieved that I couldn’t see any bones. I remember being surprised by the fact that there was no firecracker left in that monstrous hand.
A long car ride to the hospital. Too long. I whimpered all the way there.
A shot in the arm at the emergency room.
A doctor opening my hand, with my mom and dad next to me. That same doctor swabbing my hand and fingers with giant Q-tips dipped in some fluid, for what seemed like an eternity.
My mom and dad telling me not to look.
My mom cradling my head in her hands, holding me tightly against her bosom.
More pain.
A nurse wrapping my hand in what seemed like miles of gauze.
Another shot, this one in my butt.
Calm, peace, relief, sleep. Fade to black.
Did this stop us from fooling around with explosives? Of course not. I gained a special respect for duds, but kept to my old ways, unfazed. Explosions are so hard to give up. Harder even when they seem as natural as sunlight and as common as heartbeats, and you live in a world out of joint—a world that seems to need a few bangs to set it right. If I had stayed in Cuba, the experience might have come in very handy later, for I would surely have tried to blow up much bigger things, just like my relative who ended up shot by a firing squad.
Wait. One more memory has just emerged from its hiding place. One final snapshot.
I’m in my first-grade classroom. It’s nearly the end of the school year. I’m looking forward to summer vacation. Brother Pedro is at the blackboard, doing math. An essential prelude to physics. Those sorry-ass Disney characters are still there, all over the walls. Such hypocrites, always happy, except for Donald Duck, who actually showed his darker emotions, the only one who could explode. He was, and still is, the most decent of them all, and the only one I appreciated on the wall. Anyway, after glancing at Donald on the wall, I’m looking out the window at one of Brother Alejandro’s malfeasants out on the playground, kneeling on the gravel under the blazing sun, reeling slightly. The sunlight is flooding into the classroom.
I’m peeling long strips of skin off the palm of my hand and marveling at the transformation. My hand is back. My old hand, not that other one the firecracker left behind, all charred and bloody. The skin I’ve pulled off my hand is so clean, so beautiful, so transparent. It feels a lot like the wrapper on firecracker packages, except that it’s not red. I roll the white skin, knead it with my fingers, ball it up. Brother Pedro calls my name. “Carlos, pay attention!”
I drop my skin on the ground. I shed my skin.
Just like a lizard.
9
Nueve
Parties, parties, birthday parties.
Fiesta! One of the very few Spanish words every American knows. Along with its narcoleptic cousin, siesta. Parties and naps, the only two things spics are good at.
Mel Blanc, voice of Speedy Gonzalez and a thousand other Hollywood cartoons, may you burn in hell forever. As one of your God-damned Hispanic Warner Brothers cartoon characters might have said: “Sí, señor, firrst I go to zee fiesta and zen I tayk-a siesta, beeforrre I go to anozzer fiesta again. Ole! Andale, ándale! Arriba, arriba!”
I take it back, Mel. Sorry, I got carried away. Hell might be too harsh a punishment for your sins. You must have been clueless, truly. Maybe a better place for you would be heaven, where you might be surrounded by lazy, napping, partying spics who talk funny.
I couldn’t make up my mind whether I loved or loathed those birthday parties back then, in sunny, breezy Havana. It has taken me such a long time to realize that few things in life are simple, that so many things are mixed. A bit of this alongside a bit of that. Good and evil dancing with each other so tightly, only one subatomic particle between them, while indifference looks on, as a chaperone, with her two lazy eyes, neither one of them capable of focusing. Here’s a brand-new Spanish proverb for you, Mel Blanc: la indeferencia es bizca. Indifference is cross-eyed.
Anyway, they dance so fast, good and evil, these two polar opposites. So tightly and furiously. You can’t dance with just one of these partners. If you cut into their dance, you end up with both, as a threesome. And if you fear cutting into the dance and taking a spin with good and evil, you end up dancing with the cross-eyed, ugly chaperone.
Even the deepest, most wondrous love can sometimes bring you to that dismal dance, and then every single tune
is a tango. A bad tango composed by an angry, drunken Argentine just for you and your loved one. A tango that never ends.
But back to those Cuban parties: no dancing there. None at all. Furious whirling, yes, but no dancing of the literal kind. No Desi Arnaz orchestras banging on conga drums, their ridiculously puffy sleeves quivering to the beat. No rumba, no mambo, no cha-cha-cha. No tangos or string quartets. No waltzes. No Bartók, thank God. Cubans were much too smart back then to allow Bartók to be played anywhere on the island. I think there were laws against it and Bartók police who secretly spied on all the central and eastern Europeans in the country who might dare to pollute the atmosphere with music that not even Satan could dance to. Those who broke the anti-Bartók law were quickly rounded up and smacked on the temple, just above the ear.
The parties I went to just had games, costumes, and presents. No music, aside from the birthday song.
Oh, how the children of the fortunate ones celebrated their good fortune. How great, to be born to one of those families, and to have the children of similar families bring you presents and sing “Happy Birthday” in English as you blew out the candles on your excruciatingly well-decorated cake.
Well, I exaggerate a little. The lyrics were in English, but close to unrecognizable, at least the way we sang them. This is what I thought I was singing: Japy berrssdéy tú yú, Japy berrssdéy tú yú. It might as well have been Abracadabra, hocus pocus, or meka-leka-hi, meka-hiney-ho. It was a magical incantation in the language of the gods, the English tongue. In the language of the people who made movies and had invented every modern convenience.
