by Carlos Eire
Jorge and I killed them all. We started at my house and made a circuit around the entire block. I was most successful at one spot: behind the abandoned building where the pervert had held a knife to my face. There were a lot of lizards back there. I knew this because they had stared at me indifferently on that awful day. In the bright, blinding sunlight and in the darkest shade we killed them. We were as thorough as good historians chasing down every footnote. We climbed trees like mad that day, and jumped fences, and trampled shrubs all around our block.
Of course, almost all of the people who lived in those houses were new to the neighborhood. I didn’t know most of them, and I certainly didn’t care about jumping their fences or trampling their shrubbery. They were no better than thieves themselves, living in houses others had left behind.
I was on my way out. We’d received our exit permit. I knew the day and time of my departure. April the sixth, at six o’clock in the afternoon.
No more Jorge, no more Louis XVI, no more Marie Antoinette or grandparents or uncles or aunts or cousins. No more toys. No more comic books. No more baseball cards. No more lizards.
But I could take something with me that no inspector at the airport could ever find, no matter what. I could take with me the exact number of lizards I had killed on that one single day.
Forty-one.
I forget how many Jorge killed. All I know is that his number was smaller than mine, and that he will therefore spend less time in purgatory than me for that sin. Maybe forty-one thousand years less.
Forgive me, hateful, dreadful, ugly, joyous, wondrous creatures. I took it all out on you, and for all the wrong reasons.
Forgive me, Jesus. Didn’t you once say: blessed are the lizards, for they shall inherit the earth? I’m sure you did. It’s just that those lackluster apostles of yours forgot to write that one down in the final version of the Sermon on the Mount. Isn’t that it? I’m sure you said a million things that they neglected to write down. I’m sure you saw a lot of lizards there in Palestine. In the temple courtyard, on the grapevines, and the silent stones, and the fig trees, and the nets hung to dry by the Sea of Galilee, sunning themselves. Maybe they even flocked to you.
I’m sure there were even lizards at the foot of the cross, keeping you company, and that artists have left out that detail for nearly two thousand years, too. If I ever take up painting, I’ll include them in a crucifixion scene, Jesus. I’ll make sure they have drops of Your blood spattered all over their bodies. And if I ever paint an image of Your Sacred Heart, I’ll make sure there is a lizard perched on the thorns that encircle it.
You must have said plenty about them. All those people out there, in Your day, believing that this earth and everything upon it were created by an evil deity; all those people out there, in Your day, who saw lizards, snakes, and crocodiles as the ultimate proof of the existence of an evil creator.
People just like me.
You must have set them straight. It was the biggest mistake of all, wasn’t it: thinking that some creatures prove that the Father is evil? The most awful mistake of all, mistaking the serpent for the Creator?
Didn’t You also have a lot of lizard parables? Like the parable of the silent tail-less lizard? The parable of the lizard who waited patiently for little boys with brooms? The parable of the escaping iguanas? The parable of the lizard that almost flew into orbit? How about the parable of the lizard-shaped clouds? And the parable of the sinner who had an iguana’s soul?
I know I said there was no way You could have kissed them. But I’ve changed my mind. After years of reflection, I’m sure You kissed them. And they kissed You back. Not like Judas, though. They were incapable of betrayal.
No one forced You to kiss the lizard, Jesus. I, however, can’t say the same. I’ve made my peace with lizards, but I still can’t bring myself to kiss a real one. I’ve only kissed metaphorical lizards, and I can’t say that I’ve done that willingly, much less with affection. It always leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.
At least now I admire their beauty. I recognize that they’re beautiful in their own lizard way. But I can’t say that I find them kissable. Not yet.
The only lizard I can kiss joyfully is a toy lizard. My youngest son has a beautiful iguana puppet that looks better than a real iguana. I’ve kissed that. I’ve also kissed rubber and plastic lizards, and beanbag lizards. When I was a child, I didn’t have a single toy that even came close to resembling a lizard. But my children have lots of them. And when we go to Florida and see lizards, they are delighted and don’t even think of causing them pain.
I still shun real lizards, though. Apparently because I cling to the illusion that what seems ugly or painful or frightening to me is really ugly and painful and frightening. No letting go of lizards for me. No gelassenheit, not yet.
But the day of redemption will come, for sure. Maybe I won’t have to wait until I’m resurrected. Maybe it will happen in a dream, in this life. Maybe it will be the dream of a lifetime, better than the one in which my father visited me. Maybe he will come to me again and bring a friend this time.
In the dream of a lifetime I know that I’m asleep, and Louis XVI is wearing his baggy boxer shorts and wingtip shoes. I say, “No, don’t do it this way again. Come see me while I’m awake.”
“Alguien vino a verte,” is all he says. Someone is here to see you.
I see a man standing next to my father, whom I instantly recognize. He extends his hand to me, palm upwards. Something wriggles slightly.
“Kiss the lizard, Cuban boy,” says Immanuel Kant.
I stare with delight at the green chameleon Kant is holding. Wordlessly, on behalf of all lizards, the creature says, “We forgive you, we really do.”
In this, my dream of dreams, I kiss it fondly, and let go forever.
40
Cuarenta
Don’t you wish you were a kid, Dad?” asked my eldest.
“What do you mean?” I answered. “I am a kid!”
A wave hit me hard and nearly ripped off my swimsuit, but I didn’t mind. We were awaiting the perfect wave with our boogie boards. Some of the older men in the water were body surfing, but just about everyone else had some kind of board. Some had real surfboards, on which they stood, and the waves were big enough to carry them long distances. The really smart surfers wore wet suits.
This wasn’t tropical water. My hands and feet had gone totally numb from the cold about an hour before. But I didn’t mind.
Not one bit. It was so good to be a kid again. And it was great to see my own three children playing in the surf, going into very deep water, braving ten- and twelve-foot swells.
No Cuba clouds anywhere. Not a one.
I placed my youngest son on his board, carefully, and steadied him as the wave began to crest right behind us. The wave came and hit me hard. Again, I reeled. But my little son, he flew on that wave, rode it all the way to where the water meets the sand. Then my two other kids and I caught the third wave behind that one and almost made it to where my youngest stood, beaming.
This happened at Nauset Light Beach, on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, thirty-eight years, three months, and eleven days after I died for the first time.
I’ve died several times since then, and it’s getting to be routine. In fact, as I’m writing this I see another death hovering on the horizon. A big one. And I’m starting to feel like my father, with one crucial difference.
Though he claimed to have lived countless lives, each in a different body and at a different place and time, I boast of having lived about five or six lives in the same body. Sometimes even in the same place and at roughly the same time.
I just don’t seem to get this reincarnation thing right. I’ve even returned to a place I once lived, seventeen years later, as a very different person, in an older, more vulnerable body. It would have been so much nicer to have returned with a new body, and a tougher heart.
There are many ways to die. Only one kind is final, of course. But before that one
pulls you under, many others come along, like waves at the shore.
The first death is not necessarily the sweetest. But I think mine was. It came on time, as planned, as it does to anyone who’s going to be executed. I awoke that morning feeling pretty much the same way Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette must have felt on their day back in 1793. Or the way so many of my cousin Fernando’s friends must have felt on their appointed days. I stared at the dust motes in the light, as always, and got out of bed, and washed my face, and got dressed.
I had this gnawing feeling that I was about to slip into unconsciousness. Or maybe that I should try to pass out. Maybe if I fainted, they’d put me on the plane, send me to the States, and I’d just awaken there, without having gone through the trauma of parting. Just as in surgery with anesthesia. One moment you’re there, and the next thing you know, you’re somewhere else, and the ordeal is over.
But I didn’t pass out. I tried, but I just couldn’t. I’m not the fainting type.
I had recently begun to roller skate a lot. So, as soon as I’d had breakfast, I strapped on my old pre-Revolutionary skates and went for one more tour of the neighborhood. I skated past all the houses where my friends had lived. All the old friends were gone. I had some new friends, all great guys, but I didn’t know them very well. I skated past their houses, too. I skated to the old abandoned movie theater, the Rivoli, which was across the street from Aulet’s house and zoo. The Rivoli Theater had been closed since before I was born; now it was just a large building with a bar and a small store that sold soda, candy, and cigars and cigarettes. I’d bought many a soda and lots of chewing gum there back in the good old days. Uncle Filo hung out in the bar back in the old days, too. Whenever he needed a break from his research in my father’s library, he’d take a walk to the Rivoli and come back a much happier man.
I stared at my feet. I stared at my hands. I wanted to stare at my face but couldn’t. I wanted to remember being there, that moment. I wanted to remain the same, forever. Alone, for that moment, but not at all on my own yet, only one block away from my parents, and my house.
My house made me think of Ernesto, and suddenly I wanted to hurry to the airport. It was there, at the abandoned Rivoli Theater, that I had punched Ernesto hard enough to make him stop his obscene behavior towards me. One day, when we were all having fun exploring the dark, empty, musty theater, he’d grabbed me from behind and tried to press me against his body, when all the other guys were out of sight. I’d elbowed him in the gut, and wheeled around and punched him on the arms and chest. I think I might have kicked his shins, too. Right there, just a few feet from where I stood in my skates, I had delivered myself from my tormentor.
Now I was about to be freed from him for good. For an instant, I wished never to return. For another instant, I wished I could go away for a long time and return as an adult, strong as an ox and capable of beating Ernesto senseless. Maybe even strong enough to kill him with my bare hands. I pictured my grown hands around his throat, and his face as he gasped for air, turning blue, as blue as his eyes, and I imagined his iguana soul escaping from his body, bound straight for hell.
It wasn’t a pretty picture. And it still haunts me.
I skated past Aulet’s zoo and said good-bye to Blackie the chimp and the mynah bird who talked dirty, like Empress Maria Theresa in my dreams.
I came home, took off my skates, and put on my traveling clothes. Tony and I wore our sport coats and shirts with ties because that was the only way we could take them out of the country. My bag was packed by Marie Antoinette, of course. I was incapable of doing that by myself.
And there I was about to go live by myself.
Louis XVI was nowhere to be seen. He’d left the house early in the morning and showed up around lunchtime to say good-bye to us. He didn’t explain why, but he wasn’t about to go to the airport. That was that.
We said good-bye to him in the living room, right under the gaze of Maria Theresa and Shepherd Boy Jesus. He told me to be brave.
It was my grandfather Amador who drove us to the airport. Everyone was there except for Louis XVI: grandmother, grandfather, Mario, Lily, Marie Antoinette, and even Aunt Lucía, the woman without desires.
The airport was sheer torture. Apparently, the Revolution felt that those of us who were leaving for the States had to be kept at a safe distance from those we were leaving behind, lest they slip stuff to us after we’d been inspected and frisked. So the authorities built a glass enclosure around the departure gate.
They called it la pecera. The fishbowl.
We would have to go into the fishbowl early: about three or four hours before departure. They had to search us thoroughly and inspect all of our documents carefully, and that took time.
All of us milled around nervously for a short while outside the fishbowl, along with other anxious families. Some of them were making the trip as one, parents and children together. I envied them. There were other children who were about to travel alone, like us, other Peter Pan Lost Boys. Strange, but I felt no special kinship with them. None at all.
I don’t remember anyone crying. Not one person. We were all trying to be so brave.
And for us it was slightly familiar. Tony and I had been through a rehearsal of sorts when we accompanied Manuel and Rafael to the airport a few months earlier. We had joked around until the very last minute. I remember seeing a travel poster advertising Chicago, and saying to Rafa, “Do you think Americans know what cago means in Spanish?”
“Yeah, it must be funny to live there.”
“Yeah, I wonder what the place is like.”
Rafa and I joked about that again twenty-eight years later atop the Space Needle in Seattle, overlooking the dark blue Pacific Ocean, devoid of parrot fish. We spoke in English, of course. Neither of us felt comfortable speaking our mother tongue.
Tony and I had no friends to joke with that day. But we joked with each other as much as we could. That same Chicago poster was there, and we milked that dry.
As we were just about ready to go into the fishbowl, Louis XVI showed up. Sitting at home must have been unbearable for him. He looked frazzled. He was always sort of frazzled, but on that day he looked halfway electrocuted. He never touched a drop of alcohol and he scoffed at sedatives, so the look was all natural. Nothing but raw nerves, as raw as they come.
If I’d been in his shoes I think I’d have been more like Uncle Filo on his way to meet the King of Spain. Dead drunk. Or stuffed full of calmantes, as Cubans called tranquilizers.
Of course, no one at that airport had any idea how long exile would last for any of us. It could be a matter of days or months or years. No one knew for sure. But I’m willing to wager that not a single one of the people milling around the fishbowl that day could have conceived of our exile lasting until the twenty-first century.
The uncertainty made the parting easier, I suppose. It was the ultimate and most natural calmante. I remember feeling hopeful that this would be a relatively brief adventure. I also remember feeling certain that my mother would join us in a few months, maybe nine months at most.
If we had known that this would be the very last time that some of us would see one another and press our bodies together and touch, then everyone at that airport would have been wailing. Cubans are very emotional, and very physical. Being cold and reserved is considered a character flaw in Cuban culture.
But that day, there, at that airport, all those Cubans could have passed for Swiss Calvinists in a watch factory. Or Kantian philosophers at a conference. Or Zen monks raking gravel.
We never, ever thought it would take this long. Forty is a biblical number, you know. As I write this, in the year 2000, we’ve surpassed that by one.
And forty-one is the number of the lizard in the Cuban numbers racket. La lagartija. The lizard. If you dream of a lizard, you are supposed to bet on number forty-one that day. Forty-one years of Fidel as Maximum Leader of the lizard island. Maybe we should have bet on the lizard with abandon. I, of all pe
ople, should have known this.
But I didn’t find out about the number assigned to la lagartija until last week. The identity of the number forty-one showed up like a Cuba cloud, by surprise, in a photocopied document passed on to me by a friend. It’s one of those coincidences that borders on a proof for God’s existence.
Tony and I said our physical good-byes to everyone, warmly and calmly. We’d see them for the next few hours, and hear them faintly through the glass, but we wouldn’t be able to touch.
That was the worst torture. Being locked up in the fishbowl, with them on one side and us on the other, talking mostly through sign language and carefully mouthed words that could be lip-read on the other side of the thick glass.
Bastards. Dios los perdone, compañeros. May God forgive you all, comrades.
We entered the fishbowl, subjected ourselves to strip searches, explained every item in our luggage, showed our passports, and sat down to wait and wait. Tony and I joked around as much as we could. I still felt the sting of my underwear’s elastic band snapping against my waist, and of the inspector’s laughter.
We were in the aquarium, the real Aquarium of the Revolution. Were we the sharks or the parrot fish?
The time to leave never seemed to come. Imagine being on either side of that fishbowl, saying good-bye to someone you cherish, not knowing that it will be the very last time you will see them on earth. Imagine being there for three hours, maybe four. You don’t need Zen training for this meditation.
I have a glass boomerang-shaped coffee table from the 1950s that’s about half as thick as the glass curtain at the fishbowl. I love that table, but it always speaks to me of final farewells. Any piece of thick glass will do that to me.
I just brought the table out of hibernation. I’d been keeping it under wraps for more than twelve years. My lovely wife and I bought the table at auction around the same time that we started having children. Kids and glass tables don’t mix at all. We knew that all too well and had been keeping the table in a crate in several basements as we moved from place to place.
