And instantly Fifo fell asleep, but as the aircraft passed over the huge lake where the city of Holguín had formerly stood, the deafening croaking of the bullfrogs woke him.
“What in hell is that!? Have the Americans landed?” asked Fifo groggily.
“Comandante,” replied one of the few surviving technical advisors, “it’s the bullfrog farm you ordered built.”
“Bullfrogs!? Bullfrogs!? Are you nuts!? Whose idea was that?”
And since no one dared answer that question, Fifo got even angrier.
“Do you mean to tell me you’ve destroyed a city full of hardworking people so you could raise bullfrogs!? Which one of you idiot sons of bitches did such a thing? Whose idea was it?”
No one answered. Fifo ordered the escort to torture the technical advisers until they talked. Finally, one of the three advisers who were left said that the idea had come from Fifo himself. Fifo turned black with rage. So they thought he was a madman capable of such imbecility? And the adviser was instantly sentenced to death and thrown into the lake. The two other advisers, who refused to talk, died from their tortures and their bodies were thrown into the lake too. Several members of the guard began to be interrogated and tortured by other members. And so, one by one, they were killed and their bodies thrown out over various provinces. When the aircraft arrived in Havana, all that remained (with the exception of Fifo, of course) were two members of his private escort, the Lady of the Veil, and the pilot.
“I want that pilot shot,” Fifo said to his minuscule guard as soon as the Lady of the Veil had retired to her quarters. “Because of his dereliction of duty we were all almost killed at the Baracoa Anvil.”
The two escorts immediately shot the pilot, then snappily saluted. But no sooner had they saluted than Fifo called up his special forces and more than five hundred of his loyal midgets and ordered them to shoot the two surviving members of his former private escort.
“They know too much,” he told the midgets. “And as for the Lady of the Veil, I want her stabbed in the cunt and killed during the Carnival. It should look like a crime of passion. I don’t want any political trouble with the Arab world.”
ROSA’S LITTLE PINK SLIPPERS, THE MAGIC RING, AND THE SEVEN-LEAGUE SWIM FINS
How gaily Tomasito the Goya-Girl tripped along in her pink platform shoes. They were really marvelous shoes, and they’d been made especially for her out of genuine red crocodile hide. Uh-huh, red, because all the crocodiles, after they’d been moved on Fifo’s orders to the Bay of Matanzas, got so mad they turned absolutely livid, and they stayed that way. . . . Oh, but how gaily, how perfectly cheerily, the queen tripped along in those attention-getting red shoes. To think that she had spent more than ten years writing some aunt of hers who lived in Miami (although she had to admit it wasn’t her real aunt, it was just her aunt by marriage), begging her to send her a pair of platform shoes just like these. (One of her most sacred treasures was the picture of a pair of platform shoes she’d snipped out of a foreign fashion magazine that she’d bought on the black market.) And all of a sudden, at one of Virgilio’s get-togethers (and poetry readings), she’d met the cunning Mahoma. There that great whalelike thing sat, wearing a pair of platform shoes just like the ones whose photograph she gazed at longingly, lovingly, rapturously, day and night. And when she’d asked Mahoma where she’d found such a treasure, the fat thing had told her that she manufactured them herself, and that they cost three hundred pesos. Tomasito the Goya-Girl couldn’t believe her ears: three hundred pesos was three months’ salary! Tomasito pleaded with Mahoma for a discount, even a teeny one, but the cruel queen told her to forget it, she had an infinite list of clients ready to pay whatever she asked for her creations, but what she could do was put Tomasito’s name on the bottom of the list and give her a chance to start saving up. And you better save fast, hon, because if Fifo finds out about my little business he’ll take it away from me—he might even have me stoned to death with platforms.
And so poor Tomasito the Goya-Girl followed the advice of the cunning Mahoma and after work at the Tire Collective, she put in ten hours extra every day for three months (alongside Olga Andreu) picking up cigarette butts at bus stops and selling them wholesale in the Plaza de la Catedral. Finally, carrying the three hundred pesos, she climbed up to the loft (built in an architectural style known universally in Havana as “the barbecue grill”) where Mahoma lived. And there sat the great flabby thing surrounded with gigantic half-finished clogs. God, how beautiful! Some of those platforms must have been a foot and a half tall! With platforms like that, Tomasito the Goya-Girl said to herself, I’ll be the slenderest girl-queen in the world.
“Now these are just samples, in case some thieving bull macho top (which they all are—thieving, I mean) gets the idea to steal them,” Mahoma winked conspiratorially at Tomasito. “I’ve got the real stuff hidden.” And at that, the shoe queen opened a gigantic closet that no one would have ever suspected existed, since it was behind a wall covered with an immense oil portrait of Mahoma himself signed by Clara Mortera. And there, before Tomasito the Goya-Girl’s eyes, lay a treasure trove of platform shoes, the most dazzling sight she’d ever seen. They were made out of precious woods pulled through the hole in Clara’s wall and covered with canvas that Mahoma dyed so skillfully that no one would ever have imagined that it wasn’t genuine alligator. Although for very special clients—such as Tomasito the Goya-Girl—the shoe queen had real crocodile skin, taken from crocs hunted down and skinned by the Dowager Duchess de Valero and Karilda Olivar Lubricious’ husband Teodor Tampon, who happened to possess a razor-sharp saber. The shoe queen chose from among the ones with real crocodile-hide the tallest, loudest, reddest pair of platforms she had to offer. “These, darling, are you,” she said to Tomasito. “If the problem is attracting attention, then these are perfect. And they’re made of the real stuff.” Tomasito paid the three hundred pesos and started down the steep steps from the barbecue grill so fast that she lost her footing and slid halfway down headfirst. “You need to practice walking with those platforms, honey!” shouted Mahoma. “Or else you might break something!” But Tomasito picked herself up and flew like lightning out the door, her glorious red platform shoes making such a clickety-clack that she even gave a fright to the Weird Sisters, who were on their way to a special reading with Lagunas, the Clandestine Clairvoyant.
Although she hadn’t eaten in three months (she’d been saving her money, girl, remember?), those red platform shoes filled Tomasito the Goya-Girl with uncontrollable energy. “I won’t be Tomasito the Goya-Girl anymore,” she told herself, “I’ll be a Queen; I’ll stand so tall that this stupid nickname that Skunk in a Funk hung on me won’t make any sense anymore.” And yet somehow it did still fit her, because now, rather than being one of those monstrous court dwarves in Goya’s paintings, she was one of the figures on stilts. But utterly unconscious of this sad fact, Tomasito clickety-clacked from one end of Havana to another. And when, like Hector in the Iliad, she had made three circuits of the city, she heard a whistle from one of the little nooks along the Malecón. Ay, somebody was whistling at her, the former Goya-Girl—and it was a black man so huge and so well-equipped that he obviously had to be one of the members of the national pole-vault team—a team that Fifo himself selected and took personal charge of. The towering fairy stopped dead in her clickety-clacks; there came the whistle again. This time the gigantic black man motioned for her to come over. And a conversation was struck up that grew more and more . . . shall we say intimate. While he talked, the ebony love god from time to time would delicately (as though he had a secret itch that was just the slightest bit embarrassing) scratch and reaccommodate his balls. The towering fairy would give a little clickety-clack, step back, and then clickety-clack just a little closer to the sweet Ethiop. Why don’t we take a little walk along the Malecón? he finally said, sweeping her from head to foot with a look so lustful and so lecherous that Tomasito thought she’d faint dead away on the spot. And so they came t
o the Castle of Running Waters, a colonial fortress converted on Fifo’s orders into a public toilet. The teetering fairy looked at the very impressive black man, who was already disappearing into the blackness of the interior of the building, and she gave a few short, nervous, doubtful little click-clacks. But the gigantic hunk called out to her from the darkness within: “Come on, I’m gonna screw you till it comes out your tonsils.” Heavens, who could resist such an exquisite offer? And so like a flash the teetering-towering fairy rushed into the blackness of the Castle of Power. She felt herself grasped by her nonexistent waist, felt her gigantic lover raise her into the air, felt the burning breath of that body that was about to fill her with meaty happiness. The black man raised her, higher and higher, gave her a little toss, and in midair ripped the platform shoes off Tomasito, just as she felt she was about to be truly levitated. But when she fell to the floor what she saw was the gigantic black man standing above her with the gorgeous platform shoes in his hands, and the words of love he was speaking were these: “You better make a run for it, faggot, unless you want that ugly head of yours smashed in with these platforms.” And when she made a gesture of protest, the black man gave her such a whack in the head with the platform shoes that Tomasito the Goya-Girl finally realized that she was about to be killed by a professional assassin. The fairy, no longer towering, dragged herself, trembling and barefooted, from the Castle of Power, and barefooted she continued on through the city, until she came to her own hovel, another barbecue grill made by Skunk in a Funk out of wood pulled through the hole in Clara’s wall.
Lying on her stomach on the wooden bridge at Patrice Lumumba Beach, Skunk in a Funk finished writing the story of Tomasito’s adventure (or misadventure) and she smiled in delight, not only because he was happy with the story he’d just finished writing, but also because she was sure that this tragic but absolutely true story would never happen to her. That sort of thing only happened to silly queens who threw caution to the wind and followed any old good-looking thug into some dark place—nobody had ever stolen as much as a safety pin from her. Not for nothing was she a friend of the cunning Mahoma, not for nothing did she distrust everybody, and especially Men. There she lay, Skunk in a Funk, next to the ocean with her gleaming rubber swim fins under the manuscript of her novel. How many princely black men, how many glorious teenagers, how many hunks, had come up to her and asked to borrow her swim fins? But no-o-o, she was too wise to ever lend anybody her swim fins. If they come, let it be for my beauty—never for my swim fins, she told herself. Not to mention that those brand-spanking-new swim fins, made in France, my dear, were the only material treasure that Skunk in a Funk possessed. She had been dreaming of these swim fins for more than ten years, and finally one day a Frenchwoman (a visiting professor brought to the University of Havana by Fifo, and who could reach orgasm only when made love to by a gay man) took a liking to Skunk in a Funk and on one of her trips to Paris brought the treasure back with her. Of course Skunk in a Funk had to squeeze her eyes tight, take a deep breath, swallow her pride, and make love to the professor to get them, but in the end she even got her pregnant, thanks to the erotic inspiration (prodding) of a daisy chain they were in at the time. Nine months later, the Frenchwoman gave birth to a baby boy that was totally white on one side and totally black on the other. In terror she abandoned her son and her husband, Captain Miguel Figueroa (who also screwed women using the daisy-chain method), and took refuge for the rest of her days in a cave in the Pyrenees. . . .
Uh-huh, that was all true (and tragic) enough, but what counted was that Skunk in a Funk now had her swim fins, and that more than offset the guilt she felt for betraying her sex by screwing a woman. Pulling on those gleaming black rubber swim fins, Skunk in a Funk would dive into the waters off Patrice Lumumba Beach, La Concha, Cubanaleco, or anywhere in Guanabo, and glide along the seabed more gracefully than any fish. She would glide between the legs of the men who stood waist- or neck-deep in the warm water, conversing with their wives and children, and as that family conversation followed its conventional course (chicken pox, smallpox, the French pox), the glorious hunk’s sexual temperature, as he felt the underwater nibblings and gropings of the artful Skunk, would begin to rise (as would something else, too). Then all Skunk in a Funk would have to do would be pull down the hunk’s bathing suit and suck, while on the surface the noble domestic chat continued—the atomic bomb, the hydrogen bomb, the neutron bomb. The hunk would cum with a deep sigh and sometimes even a stirring Ah! that would surprise the people he was talking to, while Skunk in a Funk, always below the water, would swim off to the next luscious mouthful. . . . What’s wrong? the wife or sweetheart would ask when one of those gorgeous hunks emitted his Ah of delight. Oh, nothing, the glorious hunk whose member had just been sucked would reply, I thought I stepped on a sea urchin or a jellyfish. And the Divine Ms. Skunk in a Funk, with her wonderful swim fins, would work her way along the shoreline, wreaking domestic and aquatic devastation. By now a school of brightly-colored fish that had learned to like the taste of cum (an exotic species, certainly) would follow along, knowing that near whatever legs the agile swimmer hovered, a celestial liquor soon would flow. But one must say, in all good conscience, that sometimes Skunk in a Funk would leave off her oral pleasure-giving (and -taking), dive straight down near the shoreline, and begin to gnaw furiously at the base of the island. Because in spite of that wondrous sea that brought her such marvelous men, Skunk in a Funk was another one of those who wanted to flee the island. That was why he gnawed away at the island’s foundation, although she also dreamed of using her swim fins to make it at least to Key West.
Yes, she would leave the island, but not without taking her swim fins with her and not before her novel, The Color of Summer, was completed. And thinking about that novel she picked up the pen that she’d slipped in her pocket not long ago at a reception for Carlitos Olivares, the Most In-Your-Face Queen in Cuba, and started writing again.
Coco Salas’ dream had come true at last! He owned a leather belt a good eighteen inches wide with a buckle that was more than a buckle—it was two enormous, gleaming harness rings. It was a wonderful belt. Halisia Jalonzo had brought it back with her from one of her trips to Europe. Coco cinched the belt around his waist and contemplated herself in the mirror at the foot of her bed in the Hotel Monserrate. Squealing with delight, she clinked the buckle-rings together two or three times and as she paraded all about the room she practically crowed.
One had to admit that the change the belt made on the old queen was amazing. Coco Salas was one of those cases that are totally thin and bony yet have a huge potbelly. Right in the middle of that ironing-board figure there bulged a big round mound—she looked like a boa constrictor that had swallowed a whole chicken. And what that potbelly blooming so unexpectedly out of that sack of bones did was, it made Coco’s ugliness even uglier. But now!—now that marvelous belt did away with the bulge, or at least held it in a bit. Coco Salas still looked like a boa constrictor (a bald, skinny boa constrictor standing on its tail, “the garter snake from Holguín,” as Delfín Proust had called her), but now a ringed one, without that disfiguring bulge. But it wasn’t just that the belt favored her physically; it also did her a world of good emotionally, and it had to help in the pecking order. After all, it had been a gift from Halisia Jalonzo, the world’s primeríssima prima ballerina (that was what the island newspapers said) and intimate friend of Fifo. Oh, what a terrible blow it would be to Coco’s friends and foes alike (and in the life of a queen they were almost always alike) when she showed up in public with that wonderful belt. And as for the men—how would they ever be able to resist her? How could she not be the center of attention with those brightly gleaming harness rings? I bought it right across the street from the cathedral in Segovia, Halisia had told her; between you and me, I think it has magical powers, my dear, because the same day I bought it, La Pasionaria keeled over and died. Put it on, Coco darling—you’ll knock ’em dead.
And that s
ame night, Coco Salas cinched the belt tight around his waist and (almost unable to breathe) headed for Coney Island. When she made her entrance at the Coney Island Amusement Park in Mariano, even Ye-Ye (Miss PornoPop to you, Mary), who in her own special way was the most sophisticated queen in the world, had to put her cruising on autopilot for a minute and inspect that belt; even the Flower Boys, who were there to be looked at, not to look, looked. Hiram, La Reine des Araignées, who was up on a dais choosing the prettiest of the teenagers, those who would take part in Fifo’s private party for all the high muckety-mucks in the government, paused for a moment in her probing, testing, and speechmaking to gaze upon the luminescent apparition. And she, Coco Salas, walked regally down the rank of gorgeous boys picked out by Delfín Proust and elbowed her way into the crowd where even Eachurbod, indefatigably searching for a man, halted for a moment in her eyelash-fluttering to contemplate the leather-queen bound by that devastatingly butch belt. Even the hustlers from Sandy Creek made a mute but unmistakable (and very masculine) gesture. Peerless Gorialdo cupped his balls when the queen passed by. But Coco Salas continued onward, rigidly at attention (the belt kept her from walking any other way), through the multitude that parted as it gazed in wonder at her wonderfulness. The Dowager Duchess de Valero, La Reine, Divinely Malign, and SuperSatanic put their chicanery and machinations on hold to stand in petrified amazement as Coco martially marched past in her marvelous belt. Heavens, and when Mayoya, unable to contain her curiosity, asked Coco where on earth she’d found such a belt, and Coco told her it was a gift from Halisia, a thousand fairies and assorted queens, including La Reine des Araignées and the Dowager Duchess de Valero, bowed in reverent respect before the boa constrictor honored by the witch. But the boa constrictor honored by the dancing hag continued her progress through all of Coney Island without a moment’s pause at any compliment, wink, or whistle, or even the obvious erotic gestures made by the most stunning pistol-packers. One could only assume that she felt there was no one at Coney Island worthy of screwing a queen who possessed such a glamorous girdle. My grandeur prevents me from fraternizing with anyone who is not of the stature of my belt, Coco said to herself (though she was unable to swell with pride as she’d have wished, since the belt was fairly strangling her). And she continued walking through the crowd of inferior creatures clad in their rustic clothes and plastic belts. It was only toward midnight, in one of the most out-of-the-way places in the park, that the regal personage discovered a love god worthy of her light-emitting harness rings. But the love god, precisely because he was God, didn’t so much as look at her. The queen, making the belt clank even more and rubbing the rings to make them shine all the brighter (in fact, they now seemed to emit bolts of lightning), circled the apparently unimpressed love god several times, but to no avail. He just kept looking off toward the Ferris wheel, whose revolutions traced rings of light in the dark sky. This cannot be, said the queen to herself, that I, the protegée of Halisia Jalonzo, with this wonderful belt on, should be ignored. And at that, all asparkle, she approached the love god. The love god was one of those sophisticated, breathtaking, irresistible street thugs, a child of sixteen with a body, face, and hair that would have made Antinous himself turn green with envy. Yet no one in the multitudinous world of Pansyland had ever known that delicious boy to have anything to do with fairies. The sweet young hunk’s reputation was such that he became known as the White Angel of Marianao. But a queen wearing that marvelous belt was not some mere mortal queen, she was a love goddess in her own right, and there was no way she was going to be intimidated by an angel. And so, my dear, without preamble, she planted herself before that angel and spoke these wingèd words: “You can follow me if you want to. I’m going into that stand of palm trees over there.” It was the command of a crown princess whose sweet loins were set off by a sparkling girdle. And without looking back, Coco Salas walked with poise and serenity into the stand of palm trees. She stopped beside a tree and turned. In the light of the powerfully gleaming harness rings that cinched the girdle to her waist, she saw the Angel of Marianao approaching. Few were the words spoken. The gods have ways of understanding one another, said the love goddess to herself. And swiftly she began unbuttoning the God’s shirt (since she had already capitalized Him), unbuckled his plastic belt (bought with an H-190 ration coupon), and weighed his celestial attributes in her cupped hand. Coco started to bow down before those divine dimensions to bestow a kiss upon them, but her glamorous girdle would not allow it. And taking off her belt was like asking Elizabeth Regina to remove her crown. Coco, loco, imprisoned by her belt, continued to caress the angel’s divine prepuce, which swelled ever larger by the moment. Turn around, I want to stick it to you, the angel said to the love goddess, who twinkled within the palm grove like some huge lightning bug. And the queen turned, and the angel began to embrace her from behind. You turn me on, bitch, said the angel, and the love goddess thought she was going to melt. Come on, let me stick it to you, the angel insisted as he fumbled at that glorious belt and tried to push her pants down. No, said the love goddess, making a supreme effort, I don’t want you to take my belt off. . . . Well, I can’t do anything with it on, the angel said, his celestial member pointing straight as an arrow at her heart. And besides, with all that sparkling, somebody’ll see us. And the love goddess, swayed by such persuasive suasion, allowed the angel to unbuckle the magnificent belt and pull down her pants. Get down on your hands and knees, the angel begged her, a tremulous hitch in his voice, and the queen of queens could not refuse a request so sublime. And so on all fours under the palm trees, she knelt in readiness for the angelic benediction (with a capital Dick). But then, across her naked buttocks waiting expectantly, tremblingly, for the scepter of the love god, there exploded a horrible pain! What’s happening!? shrieked Coco, and she saw the angel holding her wondrous belt by one end and raising it to deliver yet another mortal blow. The angel was thrashing the queen of queens with the gleaming buckle of her glorious belt. Coco Salas tried to run away, but with her pants around her ankles it was hard to do—the only thing she could manage was to scurry away on all fours. And so hoist, as it were, by her own petard, she desperately (agonizingly slowly) scrambled toward Coney Island while the two huge luminescent harness rings pummeled her pained and reddened buttocks. With ever-increasing fury, the angel, a.k.a. Lisa’s Tatica, lashed her—until the four-legged love goddess could finally manage to reach the lights. And then the gorgeous boy put on the belt and walked away. The bloody, bowed, and belted (though disbelted) love goddess, once more sporting an enormous round potbelly, pulled herself to her feet on a fence—the fence that surrounded the Ferris wheel, which was still making radiant circles in the sky.
The Color of Summer: or The New Garden of Earthly Delights Page 21
