by Carlos Eire
“Ay, tía, gracias por el Batman.”
“De nada, Carlitos.”
19
Diecinueve
The shoe slid like a hockey puck across the marble floor, hit my big toe, bounced off, crashed through the glass on the display case, and landed right inside an eighteenth-century cup, heel first. Cup and saucer wobbled a bit in protest but ended up accepting the presence of the shoe.
Goal!
But that wasn’t what we were trying to do at all. Tony and I had taken off our shoes inside the house, which was strictly forbidden except at bedtime, and he was trying to slide his shoe down the long hallway from the living room all the way to our bedroom. My toe just happened to be in the way. It was a one-in-a-billion shot.
The instant that shoe bounced off my toe and headed towards the display case, we both knew we were in big trouble.
The shoe stuck out of the cup at an angle and looked uncomfortable. The cup looked disgusted. The glass shards on the floor and inside the display case looked devastated. My big toe was bright red and it throbbed like Yoruba drums during a spirit-possession dance. Just then, as I was about to start crying, Louis XVI emerged from his study.
“What was that? I heard glass breaking.”
Silence, for an instant.
“Oh my God, my Louis XV cup! Oh—My display case!…Aaaaarghh!”
That awful guttural sound made my skin crawl. But the sound of the belt sliding off his baggy trousers was more awful still. It was a very familiar sound. All too familiar.
Swwissshhhhhhhhhhhhh!
Without even asking who was responsible for filling the cup with a shoe, Louis XVI swung his leather belt over his head and brought it down on my shoulder.
Swishh, whack!
Up again, swishh, down again: swishh, thwack!
Right across my back, just as I was trying to get up.
Up again, swishh, down again, whack!
The back of my neck this time.
I was screaming and crying at the same time: “But…it wasn’t my fault…Ay!…I didn’t do it…Ay! Ay!…No hice nada…I didn’t do anything…really…I didn’t.”
Swish, thwack!
Across my butt this time. By now I was standing up, though doubled over in pain.
And Tony was nowhere in sight. He had fled the scene of the crime instantly, leaving me all alone to face the wrath of the Great Collector.
I tried running away from my dad while trying to explain what had happened, but it was no use. The Judge had weighed the evidence with his customary speed and pronounced me guilty on the spot. Then he had instantly turned into an executioner. Twenty lashes with a wide leather belt! Scourge away, show no mercy! There’s nothing like swift justice, administered by a real judge, believe me. The welts stayed with me for a while, but not anywhere as long as the memory of my brother’s betrayal or my father’s wrath.
You didn’t want to mess with his collection. No way.
Our house was not a place in which we frolicked. Everywhere you turned, there was something fragile and valuable. Lucky for us we lived in the tropics and could play outside all the time. Even when it rained, we could play on the porch. Or in our room, where there was nothing to break, except our beds.
I got whacked for the bed Tony broke, too. He was the great evader, the master escape artist, the king of blame shifting.
Tony must not have been as skilled in evading punishment at school, though, for I do remember him having to stay late for after-hours detention, and sometimes even for Saturday detention. He wasn’t among the worst, though. Not once did he have to kneel in the gravel out in the hot sun.
Ernesto was among the worst, but he never got punished for anything around the house. No, instead he ended up with all the goods. Justice might be most intensely blind in a judge’s own home.
Hey, but that collection was something else. Something sacred, at least for my dad. It was what he cared about the most, what had sunk deepest into the core of his soul. If I’d been a Calvinist minister instead of a Catholic and his son, I would have accused him of idolatry and blasted his ears with censure: “Inflamed with love for graven images and baubles of all sorts, a supplicant at their empty, bogus feet. Idolater! High Priest of false gods! Inflaming yourself with idols at every antique store!”
And if I’d been a santero, I’d have said something like: “Reparte los dioses, compay!” Share the gods, buddy! Don’t keep them all to yourself! Dot the landscape with shrines!
Eye Jesus should have had his own church in Havana. God knows what the voodoo and santería crowd would have dreamed up for him to do. Maybe they’d have turned him into Jesús de los Buenos Ojos: Good-eyed Jesus, protector supreme against the evil eye. Or maybe X-ray Jesus, Jesús de los Rayos X, supreme advocate of those who wished to see right through women’s clothing. Or Jesús de la Pelota, Ball Jesus, supreme guide of all baseball players who must always keep their eye on the ball. Or Jesús de la Lotería, Lottery Jesus, great visualizer and prophet of winning lottery numbers.
I can hear the prayers, even now, in far-off Connecticut: “Oye, Jesusito lindo, mírame con esos ojitos azules tan chulos, persígueme con tu vista, y dime que número va a salir en la lotería mañana.” Listen, pretty little Jesus, look at me with those cool little blue eyes, pursue me with your gaze, and tell me which number will win the lottery tomorrow.
Every one of those objects in our house could have had its own church or temple, and altars full of votive offerings. Eye Jesus could have collected eyeglasses by the thousands, and lottery tickets, and baseballs. Perhaps even dresses and underwear taken from those women who had been scoped out and successfully wooed by men with X-ray vision.
Imagine also the Shrine of Maria Theresa, patroness of everyone with a foul mouth, where all the prayers would end with coño instead of “amen,” and where all the votive offerings would involve dirty magazines—and chauffeurs, of course.
Or the Basilica of Candlestick Lady, patroness of lithe, shapely legs, healer of varicose veins, avatar of sexual encounters, advocate for pursuers of fugitives, and guardian against power outages.
Or El Sagrado Templo de la Taza del Zapato, the Sacred Temple of the Shoe Cup, which would have been bizarre enough to attract an infinite, inexhaustible number of devotions, most of them probably having something to do with gambling, love potions, and foot fetishes. Sex and money would surely be the most popular dimensions of devotion to this cup and to any other sacred object in Cuba.
Of course, since these objects belonged to my father, we could have pocketed a good percentage of the donations made at these shrines. This income would have allowed Louis XVI to travel and buy even more objects. What a happy cycle of buying and setting up shrines my dad could have enjoyed! How fabulously rich we could have become!
But no, my dad kept the objects all to himself, guarding them like Cerberus, the dog at the gates of the Underworld.
God forbid that one of our friends should damage his stuff! More than once, some friend broke something or came perilously close. More than once, friends were expelled from our house and barred from re-entering it for a long time. Once one of our friends came dangerously close to being banished forever.
Of course, it was Eugenio, El Alocado. One day, as he ran into the living room, Eugenio knocked over a small enameled picture frame. It crashed to the floor, the enamel on one corner of the frame disintegrating on impact with a sound like a very small, very weak firecracker.
“What happened?” My dad bolted out of his study and into the living room. “Oh, my God, no, no, not the frame! No! Nooooooo!”
Not a word from any of us. Eugenio tried to slink away.
“Who did this? Who?”
“Eugenio did it,” Tony was quick to point out.
“Get out! Get out of this house right now, and never, ever come back. You hear me? Never, ever. You’re never setting foot in this house again. Out! Out! Now!”
I had never seen King Louis yell so loudly and so angrily at one of
our friends. Eugenio made himself as small as possible and, without saying a word, walked out the front door. Then my dad called Eugenio’s parents and told them that he never wanted to see their son again.
Coño, qué mierda!
Somehow, eventually, Eugenio managed to have his sentence revoked. But whenever he played with us after that, El Alocado always hesitated before entering our house.
Any day could turn into Judgment Day at our house. A thousand and one booby traps surrounded you, all set to trigger the worst possible reaction from our judge, father, and executioner.
It was a lot like life itself, at least as my teachers would have it. Life was a labyrinth freighted with booby traps of all sorts. Temptations to commit sin. Temptations to choose evil instead of good. Temptations by the billions and trillions and numbers beyond naming. Temptations that could ruin your life in the here and now. Temptations that could lead to woe at Judgment Day and, afterwards, for eternity.
At the end of every life, we were told, a Judge awaits. God the Father, God the Judge. Or was it Christ? I don’t know about the other kids, but I was a bit confused. Who judged you, and how many times? There was a judgment when you died and one at the end of the world, the Final Judgment. Or were they one and the same? And if they weren’t the same, was it the Father who judged you first, right after death, and the Son later, at the end of time? I couldn’t sort those out. All I knew was that judges who were fathers could be tough as hell.
Hell. Ah, el infierno! Fire, endless fire. Torments beyond any that Batista’s police could dream up. Demons. Ugly, mean ones. Much worse than the diablitos at the university museum. Everlasting suffering beyond anyone’s imagination. An infinite number of firecrackers blowing up on every part of your body constantly, forever and ever. An infinite number of apelike demons biting your ass and every part of your body, forever and ever. An infinite number of fat demons sitting on your head and burying it in red-hot sand forever and ever. An infinite number of pointy almonds striking every part of your body, forever and ever. An infinite number of friends lying to you, breaking promises, betraying you forever and ever.
Repetition was key to the representations of hell our teachers unveiled to us. Without repetition, the eternal dimension would have seemed flat and less frightful. Hell, they emphasized, lasts forever.
And what did forever mean?
“Ah, Carlos, good question. Infinity is beyond comprehension. The best we can do is employ images to convey a sense of infinity. You want to know what ‘forever’ means in terms of hell and the suffering that awaits us there? Well, answer this question first: if all of the oceans on earth were to be filled with sand, and a bird were to remove one tiny grain of sand every million years, how long would it take for all of the sand to be removed?”
We gave all sorts of answers, but all of them were wrong.
“All right, you want to know the right answer? The right answer is this: ridding the earth of all that sand, grain by grain, in one-million-year increments would take only a fraction of the time one would spend in hell. The whole process would be only an infinitesimally insignificant fraction of the eternity that is hell. So small a fraction as not to count at all. Almost the same as zero. Eternity has no end.”
And one sin could take you there. Just one.
My third-grade teacher was the master of hell and damnation. Rumor had it that he had tried to become a Christian Brother but hadn’t made it. The rumor was probably true, because this man really knew his eschatology.
He was short. Probably between five feet three and five feet four. And he looked a little bit like the Mexican actor Cantinflas, except without the silly moustache. His hands were in proportion to his slight frame but had very long, thin fingers. They reminded me of the tines on the pitchforks that devils supposedly carried around in hell—those pitchforks with which they loved to skewer you forever and ever.
Imagine my surprise when, many years later, I stumbled across the work of Caesarius of Heisterbach, a thirteenth-century Cistercian monk who collected stories such as the ones that our third-grade teacher told us. What a revelation to discover that I’d been reared in the Middle Ages. What a thrill to discover that it was Caesarius who had been speaking to us third graders in Havana, within sight of the turquoise sea, at the very same time that tourists flocked to our island seeking all sorts of pleasures, most of which were unavailable or illegal back in their homelands. Brother Caesarius had spoken to us from beyond the grave even as Fidel Castro was waging guerilla warfare against Batista’s forces in the eastern end of Cuba.
I remember most of the stories el profesor told us in third grade, along with the beads of sweat that appeared on his face while he told them. I have to share two of these with you.
Here’s the first one. A little boy once fell in with the wrong group of friends. He had been a very good boy up to that point in his brief life, but these bad boys started to twist his soul towards the devil. One day, these evil friends encouraged him to take God’s name in vain, and he did it. That night, he went to bed as usual, but in the middle of the night a huge, terrible, smelly black dog came into his room and took him away. The next morning his parents found his bed charred beyond recognition and no trace at all of their boy. The devil himself had come to drag him down to hell.
Of course, the specific words uttered by the boy were never revealed. This made it more suspenseful, and brought you almost to the brink of coming up with your own execrably vain name taking.
Now for the second one. A little boy once fell in with the wrong group of friends. He had been a very good boy up to that point in his brief life, but these bad boys started to twist his soul towards the devil. One day, these evil friends encouraged him to blaspheme, and curse the Virgin Mary, and he did it. That night, he went to bed as usual, but in the middle of the night a violent thunderstorm erupted, and a bolt of lightning came right through the window and struck him as he slept. The next morning his parents found his bed charred beyond recognition and no trace at all of their boy. The devil himself had turned into a lightning bolt and dragged him down to hell.
I warned you about the repetition.
How about one more? One that involves beads of sweat.
One night a monk is praying in his cell. This monk has not exactly been living up to his vows. (Once again, no specific mention of what was being done, or not done, by this monk.) Well, there he is praying away but not feeling too sorry for his sins, and whooosh! one of his fellow monks, now dead, shows up, enveloped in flames. The heat and the stench are unbearable. The live monk asks the dead monk: “What are you doing here?” The dead monk says he’s been sent up from purgatory to warn his fallen brother to stop sinning, repent, and go to confession, lest he too end up in the flames. The live monk asks: “Are you in hell, then, brother?” The dead monk replies: “No, brother, I’m in purgatory.” The live monk makes the mistake of saying: “Well, then it can’t really be all that bad for you, brother. After all, it’s only purgatory.” Wrong thing to say. “Hold out your hand, brother,” says the dead monk. The wayward monk puts out his hand obediently, though he is frightened out of his wits. The dead one wipes a single drop of sweat from his brow. And then he lets this tiny, lone drop of sweat fall upon the open palm of his live brother. Ouch! Ouch! Ouch! That drop of sweat sears a hole the size of a host in the monk’s hand and then hits the cold stone floor, fizzing and hissing. Then, as expected, comes the lesson from the dead monk on a five-minute furlough from purgatory: “If that’s what a single drop of sweat from purgatory can do, imagine what it will be like for you to endure these flames for thousands and thousands of years. Then imagine how much worse hell will be! Amend your life, brother, and pray for me, so I may be released from this torment.”
Snuck in hell, didn’t I? Just like my third-grade teacher used to do.
Second grade had been a different kind of hell. I’ve told you about this already: that’s when we learned to distinguish between venial and mortal sins. What I haven’t tol
d you is that it was in second grade that we learned about hell on earth, too.
Hell on earth was our classroom.
Practically every inch of space on our walls was taken up by dead animals that had paid a visit to the taxidermist. And the taxidermist was none other than our teacher. Most of the animals were native to the island, but there were a couple of common dogs and cats too. I remember bats, iguanas, several kinds of rodents, birds, turtles, fish, and, in the left front corner of the classroom, a large majá, or Cuban boa, curled around a suitably sized tree limb. You can imagine how much I liked that boa.
