“I’m the first to acknowledge that sacred debt.”
“I couldn’t repay Don Santos with anything less than my life.”
“Domiciano’s an evil ingrate.”
They were in agreement. Del Valle passed his flask around.
VII
Skull lunar white, Tyrant scanned the sky with his telescope. “Five dates when the comet heralded by European astronomers will come into view. A heavenly event we’d be ignorant of if it weren’t for sages abroad. In those starry spaces I expect they know nothing of our revolutions. We’re quits. Nonetheless, Master Veguillas, our scientific backwardness is evident. You must draw up a decree endowing the School of Nautical and Astronomical Sciences with a good telescope.”
Master Nacho Veguillas bobbed up and down self-importantly, stuck out his chest, and bellowed, “To nurture learning is to act patriotically!”
Tyrant greeted the poor cur’s vinous elation with an amused nod of his skull, as his eyeglass revisited the night sky. Fireflies lit up the vague moonlit geometry of the garden with quadrilles of light.
VIII
Screaming, her hair straggling and her eyes beady as a mountain scavenger, a woman in a nightshirt swept into the room. Silence fell. All wrangling stopped. Tyrant Banderas recovered, swore, and stamped the ground. Terrified of punishment, the chambermaid and butler who had rushed after the nightshirted figure froze in the doorway. Tyrant thundered, “You fucker, is this how you keep her on a tether! You sonovabitch, you really kept a tight hold on her, didn’t you!”
The two figures rocked in tandem on the doorstep and sighed—dark, hazy shapes shaking in the shadowy gloom. Tyrant Banderas went over to the nightshirted figure crouched in the corner, howling and frenziedly sinking her nails into her shaggy hair.
“Manolita, they’ll look after you. Just go back to your bedroom.”
The figure in the nightshirt with straggling hair was Tyrant Banderas’s daughter: young, exuberant, burnished bronze, not much more than a girl, her enigmatic features set like a totem in a cruel frozen rictus of pain. Doubled over, she ran to take refuge in the arms of the chambermaid and butler, who were standing stock-still in the doorway. They marched her off, muttering dark threats, and disappeared into the blackness. Tyrant Banderas stalked up and down, caught in a stertorous monologue: finally he reached a decision. Stooped like a scarecrow, he climbed the stairs. “Major del Valle, arrest that bastard tonight.”
Part Three
A Night on the Tiles
Book One
<
id="heading_id_44">The Green Boudoir
>
I
Those famous festivities on All Saints’ Day and the Day of the Dead! The parade ground, Monotombo Square, and the Portuguese Mothers Arcade were crammed with liquor stalls and beer stands, roulette wheels and playing cards. The rabble rushes to see the toy bulls on fire being chased through the porticos on Penitents Way. Bands of jokers tear about snuffing out streetlights, making the flames on the bulls they’re running burn even brighter. A buffoon, braggart moon dissects the vast dark sky: smoke from oil lamps blackens seedy entrances to freak shows, gambling dives, and hucksters’ stalls. Blind men strum and sing to the huddled poor. The posse of Creole ranchers—ponchos, sabers, tall sombreros—takes up position behind the circle of gaming tables and fortune-tellers. Copper-skinned, barefoot, raggle-taggle gangs gallivant; on the church steps Indian potters sell clay bells covered with big garish circles and stripes. Hags in black and young kids do a roaring trade in funeral bells that tinkle gloomily like an Andean quena, recalling the legendary, suicidal Peruvian friar. Boisterous guffaws on all sides. In arcades and dive bars, guitars strum ballads about miracles and thieves:
Diego Pedernales came
from good stock.
II
Baby Roach’s cathouse had strung colored lights across the square and lit candles for the dead in the Green Boudoir. Lupita la Romántica was in a hypnotic trance. In her crocheted wrap, her topknot at half-mast, she responded to Dr. Polish’s excited gaze and gestures by panting, yielding, and, exhausted, emitting an erotic, “Ohhh!”
“Speak, Señorita Medium.”
“Ohhh! In a dazzling light, climbing a broad staircase...I can’t. He’s gone...He’s lost me.”
“Go until you find him, Señorita.”
“He’s entering a doorway guarded by a sentinel.”
“Does he speak to the sentinel?”
“Yes. I can’t see him now. I can’t...Ohhh!”
“Try to see where you are, Señorita Medium.”
“I can’t.”
“I order you to.”
“Ohhh!”
“Try to see where you are. What’s around you?”
“Ohhh! Stars as big as moons shooting across the sky.”
“Have you left the terrestrial level?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do. Answer. Where are you?”
“I am dead!”
“I shall bring you back to life, Señorita Medium!”
The mountebank put the stone from a ring on the sleeping strumpet’s forehead, waved his hands over her, and blew on her eyelids.
“Ohhh!”
“Señorita Medium, you will now wake up, happy and without a headache. Very happy, wide awake and feeling no aches or pains.”
He droned on, mumbling like a priest at mass. Big Mamma was shouting down the corridor, and in the square, full of dancing, drinking, and groping, Colonel “Dainty” Domiciano de la Gándara was having one hell of a time.
III
Colonel “Dainty” Domiciano de la Gándara twangs the strings of his guitar. Yawning gaps in his shirt and breeches coincide to bare the round, smiley belly of a Tibetan god. He sports slippers and wears a revolutionary mambí’s jaunty hat tilted to show off a red scarf and earring. Winking and strumming, he talks dirty to the babes in low-necked nightgowns, their hair hanging loose: big, black, with rippling muscles and curls, he’s dressed in a sweat-soaked guayabera and baggy breeches held up by a belt with a silver buckle. Bacchanalian laughter bursts out after his every lewd joke. “Dainty” Domiciano, almost always in his cups, likes to hang out in dives and knocking shops, loves to raise the roof and make mayhem at the end of a night on the tiles. Unkempt and uppity, ladies of sin rock back and lap up the hustle-bustle from behind glowing red cigarettes. “Dainty” Domiciano spluttered, strummed, and twanged a last note of the most recent thunderous version of the ballad of Diego Pedernales. His brass rings glinted and his head shone against his gleaming guitar.
The guards led the prisoner
on a skinny steed,
betrayed by an informer,
in Valdivia’s Field.
A jealous farmer’s daughter
did the evil deed.
IV
He was tickling the sickly ivories in what they called the Green Boudoir Lounge. While the uproar continued out on the patio, the empty lounge loomed large and lit up, barred windows open to the marketplace, breeze rippling the muslin curtains. Blind Bright-Eyes—his mocking moniker—played scales to the song of a skinny girl so depressed and ugly she looked like a workhouse slave. By the wall near the window two mulatto bitches vied over their fortunes as the cards were dealt: face paint brightened their sweet features and muddy honey complexions; their jet-black chignons bristled with combs—an Oriental drama in green tints and lacquer. Blind Bright-Eyes tickled the dirty ivories of the braying piano that passed its days in a shroud of black cloth. The girl sang, deadpan as a dead child, dragging the harmonies from her sad, swooping neckline, a small offertory tray gleaming mournfully on her chest.
Don’t kill me, treacherous dream!
Your image in my thoughts
is a bonfire of chaste passion!
In the pallid light of the empty lounge, her pallid voice struck an unbearably high pitch.
is a bonfire of chaste passion!
Couples danced in the marketplace, swaying to the lilt of
the danzón, languishing and lethargic, as they swept past barred windows cheek to cheek. Responding to the singer’s tremolo, the colonel, lousier than a low-down bum, hit a chord on his guitar:
Don’t kill me, treacherous dream!
V
The green silk curtain balloons under the boudoir arch: a pretentious bed shimmers in the mirror. The altar candles flicker. Lupita moaned. “By all the souls in Purgatory, I’ve had enough! What a dream! My head’s splitting!”
The mountebank soothed her. “You’ll soon get over it!”
“Turtles’ll grow beards before I let you hypnotize me again!”
Dr. Polish changed the subject, flattering the strumpet with his mountebank ploys. “You’re a fascinating instance of metempsychosis. I’m sure I could get you a contract with a Berlin theater. You could be famous! This has been a fascinating experiment!”
The strumpet pressed her temples, stuck shiny, jeweled fingers into her dark tresses. “I’ll have a splitting headache all night!”
“A cup of coffee will take care of that...Dissolve an ether capsule in your cup and soon you’ll be back in shape, ready for another experiment.”
“One’s enough!”
“Wouldn’t you like to try it in public? With clever direction, you’d be famous enough to perform in New York. I guarantee you a percentage. Before the year’s out, you’ll be framing diplomas from some of Europe’s most prestigious universities. It was the colonel who told me about your case, which is of so much interest to science—from every perspective. You owe it to yourself to make a study of other individuals already initiated into the mysteries of magnetism.”
“You’re not going to dupe me again, not even with a wallet full of banknotes! That experiment almost killed me!”
“There’s no risk when one adheres to scientific procedures.”
“There’s a rumor going around that the blonde who was once your assistant died on stage.”
“That I was in prison? That’s a bald-faced lie! Do I look like I’m in jail?”
“You must have filed the bars of your cell.”
“You think I’ve got those kind of powers?”
“You’re a wizard, aren’t you?”
“The study of magnetic phenomena can in no way be described as wizardry. Are you now free of your cephalic discomfort?”
“Yes, it seems to be going away.”
Big Mamma shouted down the passage, “Lupita, somebody wants you.”
“Who?”
“A friend. Get a move on!”
“I’m off. If I wasn’t so hard up, I’d have kept tonight free to worship Blessed Souls.”
“Lupe, you could be big on stage.”
“The very thought scares me stiff!”
She swept out of the boudoir, skirts rustling, followed by Dr. Polish. That necromantic rogue, with his fairground show, was in big demand at Baby Roach’s cathouse.
Book Two
<
id="heading_id_45">Illumination from the Spirits
>
I
He rode out with a town crier
on a donkey from the court.
He swore at the executioner,
who slipped on the hood
and flashed a Masonic finger
at where Jesus stood.
The naked sinners stopped whispering. They waited in the Green Boudoir by the oil lamps and candles on the altar. They heard the ballad and the strumming of the guitar. Moths whirred around the flames on the altar. Lovers muttered by the head of the bed.
Strumpet: “He was obscene!”
Pimp: “Atheist!”
“That song sounds blacker than the tomb tonight.”
“Happy in life, sad in death!”
“Crap! You caw like a crow! At the final trump, Veguillas, will you confess like a Christian?”
“I’ve never denied the soul’s eternal life!”
“Dear Nacho, we are Spirit as well as matter! This flesh of mine houses a romantic! If I weren’t so hard up, I’d have observed All Saints’. But I’m up to my neck in debt to Madame! Nachito, who doesn’t have their dead to honor? Orphans, yeah, but they just don’t know who their dead are. This day should be the most honored day of all. It brings back so many memories! If you were a romantic, you’d do your duty. You’d pay my dues and leave.”
“What if I left without paying?”
“Sure. That’s how romantic I am! But I’m telling you that if I didn’t owe Big Mamma—”
“You want me to close your account?”
“What are you getting at?”
“Do you want me to pay off your debt?”
“Don’t pull my leg, Nachito.”
“Do you owe a lot?”
“Thirty Manfreds! I gave her fifteen in the May Pole Festival! Since you took over my debt, I was going to be a loyal slave!”
“I’m no slave-keeper, sorry!”
The strumpet gazed wonderingly at her glittering fake rings. She thought back. Her painted mouth complained: “We’ve had this conversation. Don’t you remember, Veguillas? Same words, yes, same big talk.”
The sinner was lost in thought, entranced by the fake gems in her rings. Veguillas was just as lost.
II
They could hear guitars playing, singing, and hoots of laughter, clapping, and heel-tapping as the girls got into stride. Shouting, running, slamming doors. Panting and stamping in the passage. Knuckles cracking and Taracena bawling, “Bolt those doors! ‘Dainty’ Domiciano’s after you with a song. Bolt them, if you ain’t already. He’s hell-bent on raising Cain in the bedrooms.”
Still focused on her fabulous hands, the romantic heaved a sigh. “Domiciano knows how to live it up!”
“And when it’s wake-up time?”
“Hail Mary! Haven’t we had this conversation, Veguillas? What were you saying about the bad end in store for dear little Colonel de la Gándara?”
Veguillas blustered. “That secret never passed my lips!”
“I’ve got my doubts! I spied Old Nick in your eyes just then, Nachito!”
“Lupita, are you seeing things?”
He was coming up the passage; the din of his singing, strumming, clapping, and stamping grew louder. Their friend sang a song from the plains:
Master Veguillas
take your lady
and raise a glass
to the Spirits.
“Holy God! The same song they sung when we was in bed together!”
Half amused, half frightened, Nacho Veguillas gave her a ringing slap on her ass.
“Lupita, you’re just too romantic!”
“Don’t get me into a state, Veguillas!”
“You’ve been pulling my leg all night.”
Song and guitar returned to the boudoir door. Candles and crosses shook on the altar. The girl muttered, “Nacho Veguillas, do you get along with ‘Dainty’ Domiciano?”
“Best friends!”
“Why don’t you tip him off so he can save his skin?”
“What do you know?”
“Didn’t we just talk about it?”
“We sure didn’t!”
“You swear, Nachito?”
“I swear!”
“We said nothing? Well, it must have been on your mind!”
Nacho Veguillas jumped up, eyes popping out of their sockets. He stood on the rug, hands over his privates.
“Lupita, you do business with the Spirits!”
“Shush!”
“Tell me!”
“I’m so confused! You’re saying we didn’t say a thing about what’s in store for Colonel de la Gándara?”
Someone banged on the door. The din resumed. Song and guitar:
Get up, friend,
put on your pants.
so we can deal
a few quick hands!
The little colonel kicked the door open and walked in. He strummed his guitar and it wobbled on his potbelly. Nacho Veguillas ran around crazy with joy. “Croak! Croak!” he sang
, just like a frog.
III
Under the bright bunting of the fiesta, the cathouse’s patio was a riot of liquor and cake. Tired hands of cards were dealt: they were so bad that the stakes on the beige in the lamp’s yellow haze shrank to nothing. Money was getting scarce, so Taracena brought in sugarcane rum and maize beer to perk things up. There was a burst of applause as Nacho Veguillas, half naked, waistcoat unbuttoned, with his suspenders trailing behind him like a tail, hopped up and down and did the toad-and-frog duet, classical music that Tyrant Banderas loved to soothe his gloomy spirits with. Like a sobbing busker, Nacho greeted the hurrahs, shook hands, and reeled from epic embrace to epic embrace. Dr. Polish, jealous of Nacho’s success, harangued a group of girls, waving his cards like a fan. The whores sat on the edges of their seats, sealed in a circle of pretty bows and bleary eyes, whispering tropical sweet nothings. The melancholy diva passed around a little offertory tray, stretching her sad swooping neck, pale and hangdog, horrid in a blue muslin bodice and hideously marked by hunger. Nachito hopped after her, making a great hoo-ha. “Croak! Croak!”
IV
Dawn broke and a drowsy couple, the blind owl and shrouded girl, drifted past the Portuguese Mothers Arcade. The bright lights of the fiesta were going out. A few stands still lined the arcade; the merry-go-round spun one final time. The blind owl and shrouded girl stumbled along, muttering darkly, “Never known times as bad as these!”
Looking like death warmed up, the girl spoke: “A fiesta used to be different!”
Owl shook his head. “Baby never brings in fresh women; that’s no way to run a business. What’s that girl from Panama like? Does she rake it in?”
“Not much—she’s too new. She’s crazy!”
“How come?”
“’Cuz of a girl they call the malagueña! She knows how to stir things up.”
“Don’t talk like those women.”
The shrouded girl stared up sadly at a star. “Was my voice very hoarse?”
“Only the first notes...Tonight you showed the passion of a true artist. If your father didn’t love you, you could be a huge success in concert halls. ‘Don’t kill me, treacherous dream.’ Divine! Dear daughter, you’ve got to start singing in concert halls so that I don’t have to live from hand to mouth anymore. I could conduct.”
Tryant Banderas Page 6
