Only the flowers of one’s native land smell sweet.
Here, joys do not bloom, they do not flower,
people’s eyes don’t simply look, they wound me,
the sun possesses no healing power—
it burns, it stings, it glowers.
AVELLANEDA:
About the U.S.A. you are such a skeptic,
while I’m an incurable romantic.
MARTÍ:
Tula, my dear, you’re living in the past—
and when I say past I do mean past.
Here, it’s a terrible existence
ruled by the laws of planned obsolescence.
AVELLANEDA:
Does that apply to poetry, too, by chance?
No more Zambrana, no Lezama Lima,
No more villanelles, no terza rima?
I have a sonnet I wrote for Washington—
now, I guess, a sonnet’s out of fashion.
MARTÍ:
I read it—and it is one
of my favorite poems of yours.
It may be a bit overdone
but you’re right to take it on tour.
AVELLANEDA:
I’m glad you at least half approve—
It’s just a silly old thing
I’ve had for such a long time.
But I read it to a friend,
and she loved the rhyme.
MARTÍ:
You’re the best at rhyme of all of us.
AVELLANEDA:
Oh, you’re too kind, you make me blush!
Of course there also has to be meaning—
I’ll read it to you again, so you’ll see what I mean.
MARTÍ:
No, I don’t have time, I’m late to a party meeting!
I have a small band of the faithful that I lead.
AVELLANEDA:
Oh, but politics aside one moment, stay
and listen to the lay
I wrote for Washington.
Tonight, I beg, your trip delay;
you and I’ll have so much fun—
here, rest upon my breast till break of day.
(Martí remains unmoved)
Do my pleas and tears no longer persuade?
Have you no pity on this poor maid?
MARTÍ:
Pity? Who dares speak of pity?! .
My life’s the one that’s shitty!
And it always has been . . .
AVELLANEDA:
Each one of us our burden’s giv’n . . .
MARTÍ:
Oh, but the burden that you’ve chosen
is to be feted at hommages
and in salons
to wear couturier gowns,
to have men kiss your hand—
and be the showpiece of a tyrant!
AVELLANEDA:
How dare you! I am eagle, foe of tyrants!
Of course I have my weaknesses.
All of us are human.
You, for instance,
betrayed a friend:
you slept with the wife
of a man who saved your life.
MARTÍ:
Friend? Oh, please!
Look—I’m leaving because I want to die in peace.
I am not the man I was—and not the man I want to be.
AVELLANEDA:
But there is still your poetry.
It is for the ages; it is undying verse.
You still possess the entire universe!
MARTÍ:
Which I will never see.
AVELLANEDA:
How can that be?
MARTÍ:
Don’t you realize
that if I am to be immortal
I first have to die?
I am no longer a man of this world,
and the cause of liberty needs martyrs—
I’m returning to Cuba to be crucified.
AVELLANEDA:
But in Cuba you can’t be crucified;
now there’s only crucifuckingfixion.
MARTÍ: (under his breath)
Damn! I’m going to have to rethink my mission . . .
AVELLANEDA:
What if you lived for many years yet?
MARTÍ:
I’d die of disappointment,
of weariness and disillusion.
So I’m off.
Really, I’ve had enough.
AVELLANEDA:
Enough of what, Martí?
What, I wonder, are your true reasons,
your real complaints,
that lead you to set out to sea
in the season of hurricanes?
MARTÍ:
My true reasons? Did I not make them plain?
Besides having to deal with rogues and rapscallions,
my reasons
are autumn’s yellow leaves, winter’s bare trees and freezing rain,
living in a borrowed house and a foreign tongue—
bitter winters, itchy long johns.
I am out of here—I’m gone!
I am naught but the fruit’s bitter rind.
Does that answer your question?
AVELLANEDA:
Have you, then, nothing here to live for?
MARTÍ:
Life here is a wound there is no cure for.
AVELLANEDA:
Listen to what I’m going to tell you.
All of that is very well for you,
but it’s also a little overly romantic,
not to say melodramatic—
and if you land in Cuba, they’ll definitely kill you.
MARTÍ:
So? Remember, it is good to die
when it is horrible to live a lie.
AVELLANEDA:
Die here. Cuba is a desert island,
an infinite, infernal prison.
MARTÍ:
My blood will be the water for a garden.
AVELLANEDA:
You know that what I say is true.
You know that they will use you,
betray you,
and make mincemeat out of you,
and that there you’ll find no rest.
MARTÍ:
And what about those people in Key West?
Do you think their heartlessness is any less?
AVELLANEDA:
Of course it’s not my first choice, it’s not the best,
but for the time being it will do.
MARTÍ:
So they’ve brainwashed you, too?
AVELLANEDA:
Not at all—I am perfectly lucid, as you’ll see:
I have a plan,
and I think that it will work:
I’m going to publish my Collected Works,
find a nice place to settle down,
and live on the royalties.
If you came with me, we could work together.
We could help each other,
and be one another’s inspiration.
MARTÍ:
Woman, what an imagination!
What I’m looking for is a gun,
and a map, and a flashlight—
I want to start a fight,
a second Cuban Revolution!
AVELLANEDA:
That means I won’t be seeing you again?
MARTÍ:
Oh, you’ll see me again, I’m sure—
when they put up my statue
as they keep threatening to do.
But I warn you in advance,
I’ve seen the plaster cast
and there’s not much resemblance,
especially the head—which is immense!
AVELLANEDA:
Noble, no doubt, is what you meant.
MARTÍ:
No, I mean it’s a gigantic head.
And as for the forehead,
it’s broader and nakeder than a dry river bed.
AVELLANEDA:
A broad forehead is a sign of great intelligence.
MARTÍ:
It’s a sign of a receding
hairline, in my case.
AVELLANEDA:
But really, one must often pardon
artists who portray the human form.
Look at me—a veritable sylph,
and they always give me huge tits.
MARTÍ: (looking more closely at Avellaneda’s bosom)
I had no idea that you wore falsies.
AVELLANEDA:
Falsies?! How dare you! What an indignity!
These breasts, I’ll have you know, belong to me.
Here—I’ll show you . . .
MARTÍ:
Whoa . . .
Let’s not go overboard.
(It’s just a figure of speech!)
Anyway, as I was saying, when you reach the beach,
you’ll see a monstrous statue of me,
“The Apostle of Liberty,”
which is another reason I’m off to Cuba to do
battle—
I’ve got to live up to my title . . .
AVELLANEDA:
Wait, hold on—
just one last question:
What’s in that suitcase that you’re carrying?
MARTÍ:
A flamethrower,
to win the war.
AVELLANEDA:
Have I missed something, or is that a contradiction?
I mean, it seems bizarre—
you know you’re going to sure perdition,
yet you plan to win the war.
MARTÍ:
When a man dies for a cause,
when he dies for right and duty,
his death is victory,
even when his life is lost.
AVELLANEDA:
But you also thirst for glory.
MARTÍ:
No, but I do have an ideal.
AVELLANEDA:
Oh, dear, oh, dear—
how can you leave a woman
who loves you?
I love you.
And you have no one . . .
MARTÍ:
I have my flamethrower.
Martí pulls out the flamethrower and brings it up to his waist. Avellaneda looks in rapture toward the long, heavy, thick piece of armament.
AVELLANEDA: (stroking the barrel of the powerful weapon)
Ah, the flamethrower! Mighty weapon!
My pulse throbs, my breast heaves—oh, heaven!
Can I have a demonstration?
As Martí prepares to give a demonstration, Avellaneda can’t keep her hands off it.
It is so potent-looking, so long, so grand!
MARTÍ:
It is a powerful new invention,
a most ingenious sort of weapon,
and the patent is held by an American.
AVELLANEDA: (embracing Martí while she squeezes the end of the flamethrower)
Shoot! And let the fire consume us both!
Though Martí fires toward the ocean, Avellaneda’s boat is raked by the flames.
MARTÍ:
And now I must be off—Adios!
AVELLANEDA:
You would leave me here abandoned and alone,
while you go off trailing glory’s flames—oh!—
and cloudy warlike smoke
like a proud volcano?
MARTÍ:
War is serious business, not a game,
and you will not be long alone.
People will soon be standing in line, shouting your
name,
waiting to hear you recite your poems.
AVELLANEDA:
Wait, wait—will you not heed my lamentations?
MARTÍ:
Avellaneda, I have no more patience.
I long to be in the jungle, a guerrilla,
or in the middle of a cane field.
I long to hear a mockingbird again,
the palm trees whispering in the wind,
my native tongue spoken by a real Cuban,
not those hyphenates in Miami.
I want to kill the tyrant, see?
and if I must, to fall a casualty
in the color of the summer I was born in.
AVELLANEDA:
The heat, the infernal heat,
of the Cuban summer, I’m sure you mean.
MARTÍ:
You may be right, my dear,
but I want to die there.
AVELLANEDA:
You will leave me, then?
MARTÍ:
I leave you to the waves and wind.
AVELLANEDA:
Don’t listen to this poor maid’s beseeching, then,
but think at least of the acclamation
that you are throwing away.
MARTÍ:
My idée fixe takes me another way—
to Cuba. But in Key West
you will be an honored guest.
You will be treated like royalty,
as you deserve, Tula, for your poetry.
AVELLANEDA:
You go off on this wild-goose chase, this quest
for a will-o’-the-wisp, a chimera at best—
at worst, a nightmare in a nightmarish land;
you disdain my hand
and all that I might give
because you no longer want to live.
Is there no other choice, no other path?
MARTÍ:
No, only this one. I will not turn back.
AVELLANEDA:
Oh, dear, oh, dear—
it is so sad to watch you disappear
into the color of that tropical summer.
As people say now—it’s a real bummer.
MARTÍ:
Nonetheless, it’s what I’ve come for.
Summer is my favorite color . . .
AVELLANEDA:
José! José!
Where are you going on that stick horse?
MARTÍ:
To die for my cause.
Martí starts to ride away on his stick horse, on the surface of the water, the flamethrower held before him.)
AVELLANEDA:
Indeed, I know . . .
And I am proud to see you go.
Oh, had I the courage of your convictions!
But I have only my fictions.
MARTÍ:
Indeed, that’s so . . .
AVELLANEDA: (to herself)
Despite my pleas that he not go,
he’s gone, gone with his flamethrower . . .
And now I hear the sound of gunfire!
Oh, what is happening to him?
Jesus! They’ve murdered him!
And me with my boat on fire.
Help me! I can’t swim!
We hear shots, then a single loud report, much closer: a member of the audience is killed, and the person’s body must be taken out of the theater immediately. Avellaneda tries desperately to put out the flames in the boat, but they only grow worse. She calls out for help. But the only reply she receives is a hail of rotten eggs from the people on the MALECÓNin HAVANAand another rain of chocolate bars from the people in KEY WEST. And as the hail of missiles continues, the two groups now begin to shout insults at one another.
CHORUS ON THE MALECÓN:
Traitors! Maggots!
CHORUS IN KEY WEST:
Pigs! Faggots!
AVELLANEDA:
Help me! This boat will not last!
CHORUS ON THE MALECÓN:
The Color of Summer: or The New Garden of Earthly Delights Page 9
