The Color of Summer: or The New Garden of Earthly Delights

by Reinaldo Arenas

  For the Party calls the shots.

  Flee this land thou surely shalt not.

  Here with us thou must remain.

  Thou’rt a woman old and vain

  and death on the high seas surely fear,

  so let me whisper in thy ear:

  Ta-ra-ra, thou shalt not!

  For the Party calls the shots.

  Flee this land thou surely shalt not.

  If I must bide here and flee not

  because the Party calls the shots,

  what makes you think that you’re so grand, eh?

  What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander!

  Ta-ra-ra, thou shalt not!

  For the Party calls the shots!

  Flee this land thou most surely, most su-u-u-re-ly—shalt NOT!

  But then, while the symphony orchestra, in great confusion, plays El son entero, Guillotina, belying his own words, throws down his walking stick and dives into the ocean, trying to overtake the boat in which Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda is fleeing. His ears row like huge outlandish paddle wheels.

  CHORUS: (giving the alarm)

  Sensemayá the serpent—he’s getting away!

  Fifo orders Guillotina pulled from the ocean. IMMEDIATELY. The poet laureate of Cuba, dripping water, is led into Fifo’s presence.

  FIFO: (sarcastic, to Guillotina)

  Sometimes I think that you’ve forgotten

  Just exactly who I am.

  You know, Guillotina, you need a lesson.

  Midgets—cut off that man’s gams!

  The diligent midgets pull out a saw and perform the operation. The poet bleeds all over the Malecón and dies of gangrene. The symphony orchestra playstaps and then a death knell. By order of Fifo, the crowd observes a moment of silence in honor of the deceased poet laureate. Then the orchestra plays a few typically Cuban dances while, on a stage near the Malecón, Halisia dances The Death of the Black Swan.

  RAÚL KASTRO: (while a hundred diligent midgets bear away Guillotina’s mortal remains)

  What hullabaloo!

  What a racket!

  I’ll tell you, with all this whoop-de-doo,

  I’ll never find a man to string my racket!

  (Winks lasciviously.)

  The whole army, thinking perhaps that this is a farewell lament for Nicolás Guillotina, repeats, over and over, the lines that Raúl has just spoken—until Fifo orders silence by pulling his finger slowly across his throat. Everyone gets the idea.

  FIFO:

  That’ll be enough of that, you nance.

  No more of this campy fairy shit.

  This is a repudiation, not a dance.

  The Carnival hasn’t even started yet!

  Besides, they’re watching us live on satellite in France—

  so cut out the horseplay—quit, I tell you, quit!

  Hey, speaking of France, I wish we still had Sartre

  to turn our firing squads into art.

  But we’ll make do the best we can—

  Let’s get this started—Lights, camera, achtung!

  Bring on Dulce María Leynaz,

  bring on Tina Parecía Mirruz—

  this is gonna be delicious!

  Oh, and don’t forget Karilda Olivar Lubricious.

  Enter Dulce María Leynaz. She climbs the improvised steps that lead up onto the Malecón. She is wearing a long silk gown, white gloves, and a wide-brimmed straw hat to which she has tied a live vulture—the last one on the entire island.

  DULCE MARÍA LEYNAZ:

  Oh, how the water sparkles in the moonlight!

  If I could squeeze it into a fountain streaming,

  and toss a little strychnine in—

  that’d teach Avellaneda to take flight!

  Remember that I am of the aristocracy,

  so I love Fifo’s bureaucracy

  and consider royal purple very dressy—

  appearances, my dear, do truly matter;

  why, I even serve my guests cocaine on a lovely silver platter.

  Leynaz offers a bag of cocaine to Tina Parecía Mirruz, who steps up onto the Malecón on the arm of Cynthio Métier, who’s steadying her. Tina, with the exquisite humility of a campesina, starts to take the cocaine, but Cynthio stops her.

  CYNTHIO MÉTIER:

  Stop! You gotta be loca,

  girl—that stuff is coca!

  Haven’t you learned to just say no?

  TINA:

  Sure, I know how to say no,

  and I knew that it was coca,

  but I wasn’t taking it for moiit —

  it was for Paquito Métier, papá . . .

  Now standing on top of the Malecón, Tina begins her poem:

  TINA PARECÍA MIRRUZ:

  If you don’t mind my saying so, sweet girl of mine,

  you are somewhat past your prime

  in making love and making rhyme—

  I saw you, in Lenin Park, watching the men come and go,

  Wishing for one more hunky gigolo.

  I, too, have somewhat lost my touch.

  Now the old poetry doesn’t seem to flow as much

  as once it did.

  We’re sisters, you and I, under the skin—

  come back, and I will take you in,

  comfort you in my thatched cottage,

  warm you, make you a lovely pottage

  (whatever the hell that is),

  and we’ll grow old together,

  through fair and stormy weather,

  like two aging twins!

  Once you had soft, silky clothes, my pet—

  although at the moment I see they’re soaking wet;

  if you return you shall have them again,

  clothes sewn for you by fairy hands—

  for there are lots of fairies on this island.

  Come back—you can live with me,

  and we’ll have cookies with our tea!

  Karilda Olivar Lubricious sweeps upon the scene. She is wearing a red evening gown—very décolleté. In her mouth, a rose as red as her dress. Once she has wriggled up onto the Malecón, she makes a grand gesture with one of her long arms and tosses the rose to Fifo.

  KARILDA OLIVAR LUBRICIOUS:

  It’s not love that that Miss Country Mouse,

  Miss Prissy Hausfrau’s talking about.

  Real love makes you want to twist and shout.

  Love is a kiss of flesh, a taste of the hereafter,

  and that, my dear, is the kind of love I’m after—

  and it’s that kind of love that Tula’s after, too, I vow.

  Tula, you professional fire-starter, now sputtered out,

  I know for you it’s been three strikes at love, and you’ve struck out.

  That’s why I’m here today, to call you to my side—

  come on, Gertrudis, come back, and I’ll make you my bride—

  for when I see your heaving, swelling bosom

  I fear I’ll lose my senses, lose my reason.

  I feel my pulse race, feel my breathing quicken,

  feel my blood and vaginal secretions thicken—

  Oh, I am about to swo-o-o-oooon!

  Tell me—how many men have you slept with?

  How many soldiers have you bivouacked with?

  How many innocents have you corrupted?

  And how many of those coituses have been interrupted?

  You don’t need a man, you need a woman!

  And tell the truth—the idea kind of turns you on . . .

  You know that I have always yearned to give you pleasure—

  yearned to probe between your thighs for buried treasure.

  My oft-tilled flesh awaits your tickling plow—

  come, and plant your mahogany seed in me now!

  Don’t deprive me, dear Gertrudis, of that bliss.

  Bestow on me—if only once—a netherlabial French kiss.

  You who once struck fire to matchless fuses,

  come—engage me in sweet sexual abuses.

 
; Turn your boat around, come back, come back,

  and you and I will embark on another tack;

  we may be getting on in years—

  (taken a good look in the mirror lately, dear?)—

  but there’s still time to make a little hay—

  “gather ye rosebuds,” Tula, “while ye may!”

  Oh, slay me with spittle, kill me with sweet pain—

  “whatever turns you on” is my favorite saying!

  My arms yearn to wrap themselves about your body,

  my tongue longs to lick you and talk dirty—

  and if you cannot break that bourgeois habit

  of having a man in bed, then we’ll cohabit

  with a man, or centaur, or, like the President, a rabbit.

  Though I myself prefer a centaur, hung like a horse—

  oh, turn around, Tula, change your course,

  and paddle your dinghy back to me—

  I fall upon the thorns of life, I bleed!

  Toss me a line, and I’ll even haul you in.

  Come, live with me, wallow with me in sin—

  but come back now, or I promise you—Fifo will have your skin!

  When she has completed her declamation, Karilda checks to see what effect her plea has had on Avellaneda. Seeing that the old poetess is not turning back, Karilda walks over to one of the cannons that the diligent midgets have set on the wall of the Malecón, pulls out (as tight as that dress is, honey, lord knows from where!) a huge papaya, rolls it like a cannonball into the mouth of the cannon, and lights the fuse. The huge papaya shoots out of the cannon and explodes smack in the middle of Avellaneda’s chest, knocking her over—her black dress is RUINED. The boat tips, bobbles, and begins to fill with water. Avellaneda eats a few handfuls of the fruit and tosses the rest of it back to her enemies. Then, with her hands and a mantilla, she starts bailing out the boat.

  Fifo gives H. Puntilla a kick in the rear to signal him to get on with his poetical declamation. H. Puntilla rubs his bruised backside gingerly and, still staggering forward from the kick, stumbles up onto the Malecón.

  H. PUNTILLA:

  There she goes, like a wounded seagull

  wallowing in the waves.

  There she goes, like some ominous seafowl

  clouding our sunny days.

  Avast, begone! foul albatross—

  augury of misery and horror.

  Avast, begone! foul albatross,

  besmirching our island’s honor.

  (Softly)

  There I go, the heavy again!

  I hate this role they make me play,

  I’m sick of being the villain—

  When do I get to just be me?

  Baka! Grab those wings that Coco’s got on—

  I’m going to fly away!

  While the Chorus dances in a ring to El condor pasa, sung by Miriam Acebedo, H. Puntilla pulls on a huge pair of owl’s wings and, in the midst of the confusion, flies off.

  He disappears into the distant sky. Spotlights are trained on Avellaneda, who is still being pelted by rotten eggs as she attempts to keep her boat afloat. Now, bailing with the aid of a veil, she looks up at the sky and fans herself with a lotus flower.

  AVELLANEDA:

  No ties any longer hold me, all are rent.

  Heaven wills it thus, and so—amen!

  This frail bark, I fear, is going under;

  this tidal wave is ripping it asunder.

  And yet—

  the bitter cup I gladly quaff, my self expires,

  my soul finds peace at last, and naught more desires.

  When she finishes speaking these lines, Avellaneda begins to masturbate frenziedly with the lotus flower. Reaching orgasm, she falls in a faint into the boat, which continues drifting, threatening at any moment to sink.

  Suddenly lights come up on the other side of the stage, on KEY WEST. In a large pool of light, José María Heredia appears. He is dressed in the clothing characteristic of the early nineteenth century. Kilo Abierto Montamier approaches him with a makeup brush and paints great bags under the poet’s eyes. Heredia now stands alone in the spotlight. He turns away photographers and journalists, but he can’t keep an enormous electric fan behind him from ruffling his hair. With the fan always trained on him, Heredia climbs up onto the stage that has been set up in Key West for this event.

  HEREDIA: (trying to make Avellaneda hear him)

  Soft rules the sun the peaceful waves

  as the proud ship cuts through the deep.

  A broad track of white it leaves in its wake,

  bright foam in the endless sea.

  Anxiously we scan the horizon,

  eagerly we wait to spread the welcome!

  Be courageous, Gertrudis, and stay the course.

  A golden destiny awaits you on this shore.

  Come—life in America has its perks.

  Girl, they’re republishing your Collected Works!

  The lights of KEY WESTgo down. We see Avellaneda in the middle of the ocean. Heredia’s little white lies give new spirit to the poetess, who, filled with enthusiasm, begins to clean all the trash out of her boat while she declaims:

  AVELLANEDA:

  How much more thrilling to me is that virile voice

  than some vulgar (no doubt pirated) new edition.

  Fear not, Heredia, I have made my choice

  to join you and my compatriots—that is my mission.

  For you, old poet, I would brave

  winds, tempests, rotten eggs, the waves,

  and more—if beside you I might stand

  and share a second belovèd Eden, happy homeland.

  Who gives a fig about Key West, Florída?

  We will journey on to Iberia,

  and when our traveling days are done,

  stroll together under the palms.

  Darkness. We hear the rumble of the ocean and then the Guadalajara Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Octavio Plá, playing La Bayamesa. The lights come up once more. In the sky appears H. Puntilla. Beating his huge wings, he hovers over Avellaneda’s boat. He pulls out a thick manuscript. It is titled Herod Is Grazing in My Garden.

  H. PUNTILLA:

  Tula, I can’t take it anymore. Nobody can stand living there, not even Chelo, who works for State Security. I’ll just leave this with you if you don’t mind—would you see that J. J. Armas Maquiavelo gets it? Tell him that’s half of it. They say that Ufano’s supposed to come soon, but I can’t wait any longer . . .

  H. Puntilla continues his flight, arrives in KEY WEST, and approaches JoséMartí, who is among the crowd, but incognito; he has come back to life of his own volition. H. Puntilla embraces him familiarly and then from his jacket he pulls out a bottle of gin, which he immediately drinks down. Martí walks away disgusted, to a spot beside the ocean.

  We now see a huge crowd of people in KEY WEST. In an act of welcome they are throwing chocolate bars, pieces of fruit, and all sorts of trinkets and gewgaws at Avellaneda. All this stuff splashes water on her, and anything that falls outside the boat is devoured by the sharks. Avellaneda, making a desperate effort, struggles to lift H. Puntilla’s heavy manuscript. Finally she lifts it enough to tumble it overboard. A shark passes by (Pedro Ramón Lapa) and swallows it in one gulp, then gives a death-leap in the water and expires. Avellaneda now paddles at full speed.

  KEY WEST CHORUS:

  Row faster, faster! as fast as you can!

  Come, be with your friends—

  Oh, how we want you here beside us,

  Here where the streets are invariably golden

  and the Welcome Wagon’s open

  serving milk and honey, fruits and nuts!

  Countless poetesses, carrying their books dedicated to “La Franca India,” “La Peregrina,” “Tula,” and other pseudonyms used at one time or another by Avellaneda, continue to arrive in Key West. Standing on a huge stage, Martha Pérez sings the zarzuela “Cecilia Valdés.” Buses full of senators, mayors, and notables f
rom the world of religion arrive on the key. Somebody announces that in a few moments the presidential helicopter will be making its arrival. Now the poetesses, approaching the water, toss (hurl, pitch, etc.) their books to Avellaneda. Under the avalanche of paper falling into her boat, she almost capsizes. But “La Franca India” dumps their cargo into the sea and continues onward. The sharks swim away, whining piteously. . . .