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

by Reinaldo Arenas

  It looked as though the building were sentenced to quarantine for life. So the tenants started throwing down onto Calle Monserrate (the street on which the eponymous hotel stood) every imaginable object and all manner of filth, especially urinals full of piss and plastic bags filled with excrement. They also rained down dead rats, dishes, gigantic platform shoes (made by Mahoma) that would cause the immediate death of anyone struck by one, bloody Kotex, aborted fetuses. Once a poor old lady who had been waiting patiently for over a year for a Number 98 bus was hit by a bloody hand thrown from the roof by a drugged-out satan-worshiping homeless man who had been celebrating a religious ritual (in which Odoriferous Gunk took part) involving human body parts. A lead mannequin once fell off the balcony of Coco Salas’ room and made a huge hole in the middle of Calle Monserrate, not to mention taking the lives of several militia boys. Another day, a big sinister bull dyke—a sculptor who’d been given both a Guggenheim and a Wilson Center Fellowship for work which consisted of runny-looking splayed-out turds—was thrown from the balcony by her husband (Sr. Marsopo Antoni), instantly becoming what she had always sculptured: a huge splat of shit.

  In addition to flicking lice and ticks down into the street, the itinerants up on the roof would spend their days throwing rocks (which Pepe would haul up with his pulley) at pigeons, trying to kill them for dinner. These hungry vagrants seldom had much luck hitting the pigeons, but they often (perhaps accidentally) hit the students at a high school across the street. Several students died from brain injuries after being hit in the head with rocks. Because of these killings and several other, more minor casualties, a new wave of police officers stormed the building, to do another search. But this time they didn’t leave. For several days, little packages of ground meat would be tossed from the building to homemakers on the street below, who would tussle and elbow each other for the prize—and generally catch the packages before they hit the ground. All this despite a rain of foul-smelling, bloody water that also fell on the furiously shoving housewives.

  The truth was, by now Fifo’s Secret Police were seriously considering taking down the prison gate at the entrance to the Hotel Monserrate and letting the people inside get on with their lives; the internment was more expensive than the danger to public safety if they were all set free. The last straw—the event that brought down the iron bars at last—was laid by Coco Salas. For months, Coco had been using a telescope to watch a teenager at the high school across the street. One day, Coco threw the teenager a note inviting him up to his room. He wrapped the note, a twenty-peso bill, and a little Tiffany lamp to give the package some weight, in a page from the Revolution’s (and Cuba’s only) newspaper, Granma, and he lobbed it across the street. The gorgeous twink picked up the note and read it; it contained the secret of the entrance to the hotel through the refrigerator in the bar next door. All he had to do, the note said, was bribe the manager with the twenty pesos. The young man, who was nothing if not quick-witted—it was Davidcito, one of the most sinister faggots on earth in spite of the fact that nobody would ever have suspected he was “that way”—crawled through the refrigerator and came up to Coco’s room. He was sporting an irresistible hard-on as he came through the door, and he instantly started stripping off his clothes. Coco wasn’t far behind. But then Davidcito pushed Coco out onto the balcony and locked the door from the inside! That left the old queen naked and imprisoned on his own balcony, which as luck would have it was directly over Calle Monserrate (oh, I forgot—it was also called Avenida de Bél-gica). While Coco, standing naked on the balcony, pleaded with David to open the door, David took the queen’s enormous suitcases and a big portmanteau he found in the back of the closet and packed up all the queen’s belongings—including some old ballet slippers, a box of mosquitoes, and some fresh surveillance reports that Coco hadn’t even had time to turn in to Fifo’s computers. Giving the manager of the bar a handsome tip (a mosquito bigger than a turtle), the teenage hustler strutted out of the building.

  From the balcony, the naked queen saw David emerge from the building and make his way down the street, dragging all her belongings behind him. At that, Coco began to scream like an air-raid siren. For more than a week that horrid old thing ran from one end of the balcony to the other, screaming. All Havana was put on alert; everyone was nervous; there was even talk of a curfew. Not only did Coco’s screaming interrupt Halisia’s sleep, and Fifo’s; his naked body, running from one end of the balcony to the other on the busiest street in Havana—a block from Central Park—made a visual as well as aural impact that drove away tourists, counter-spies, and important journalists. Finally, some two hundred midgets from Fifo’s crack Secret Police took down the iron gate at the entrance to the hotel and released the howling banshee from the balcony.

  And that was the building, as I said, that Skunk in a Funk had wound up living in. More specifically, he lived in one of the two rooms belonging to Rubén Valentín Díaz Marzo, the Areopagite. After paying Rubén the royal sum of one thousand pesos, Skunk in a Funk had been inscribed in the Areopagite’s ration book and, with that, had become mistress of a room in that brilliant flea trap—a historic room, from which the marchioness Cristina Guzmán was one day to steal a floor tile and in which Skunk in a Funk was visited by countless other figures of renown, such as Delfín Proust, who read some really marvelous poems there. . . . Well. The question is, then, How did Skunk in a Funk ever manage to lay her hands on a thousand pesos? Quite easily, Mary, you old snoop. And thank you for asking.

  It seems that Skunk in a Funk, Rubén Valentín Díaz Marzo, Beba Carriles, el Negro Cuquejo (who had temporarily moved into the Hotel Monserrate), Clara Mortera, Teodoro Tampon, Odoriferous Gunk with his dying mother, and the cunning Mahoma, among others, all showed up one day at the house where Gabriel’s despicable Aunt Orfelina lived, and Beba Carriles produced a document (falsified by a lieutenant who was screwing her at the time and who was also one of her slave’s husbands) and waved it in Orfelina’s face. This document stated that it was the inalienable right of Reinaldo Arenas to reside in the maid’s quarters of that residence, currently occupied by Orfelina and family, from which Skunk in a Funk had been violently and rudely expelled when he was released from jail. Beba shoved Orfelina aside and broke the lock on the door to the room in which Skunk had formerly lived, and in a trice the entire royal procession had occupied that maid’s room in Miramar. (By this time, Orfelina had sold the room to her son Tony so he’d have a place to screw the big black bucks that were his type.) Orfelina was dumbstruck—what was going on here? And to top it all off, the chairwoman of the block’s Watchdog Committee (who had quickly been lesbianized by Beba) agreed that the room belonged to Skunk in a Funk. . . . Let’s do an inventory, said Clara Mortera, and see if all the victim’s belongings are in order. A search was conducted on the instant and a list was made of everything that remained—not just in the room but in the rest of the house as well. The Brontë Sisters showed Skunk in a Funk the resulting inventory.

  “My swim fins, the typewriter, all my clothes, an ashtray, four wooden testicles, a beetle-case with a cornucopia, a Globe lock, and Günter Grass’s The Tin Drum are missing,” Skunk in a Funk said.

  “Girl, if it was Günter Grass’s it wasn’t yours,” said Teodoro Tampon reasonably.

  “At any rate, madam,” Beba Carriles intoned before the openmouthed Orfelina, “in accordance with all these wherefores and therefores here, you must make restoration to your nephew for the losses you have occasioned him, either by finding all his belongings and returning them to him or by compensating him for their value, and you must also return to him the key to the room—a room which by law, I remind you, belongs to him.”

  Orfelina promptly faked a fainting spell and crumpled to the floor, her eyes squeezed tight. At the point Odoriferous Gunk said a few words in Latin, which terrified Orfelina so much that her eyes popped open. But upon seeing that queen dressed in black from head to foot, and accompanied by her dying mother, Orfelina really fainted
dead away.

  When the chairwoman of the Watchdog Committee marched away on the arm of Beba Carriles, the others—Clara Mortera, Rubén Valentín Díaz Marzo (the Areopagite), Cuquejo, and the Brontë Sisters—slapped Orfelina until she regained consciousness and then they began to hammer out an agreement between her and Skunk in a Funk (who’d managed to pick up a good-looking kid from the National Institute of Sports and Recreation and even as we speak was getting his eyes screwed out in the maid’s room). The negotiating team told Orfelina that Reinaldo would agree to give up his room and all his belongings except the swim fins (which, by the way, Tatica, not his aunt, had stolen from him) on the condition that Orfelina immediately pay him two thousand pesos. The old whore threw herself to the floor howling—where, oh where, would she ever be able to find that much money? “Well then, Reinaldo will keep his room and you will go to prison.” Those were the words of Clara Mortera, seconded immediately by Rubén Valentín Díaz Marzo, the Areopagite. Seeing in the faces of that menacing delegation that she had no real choice (and given that the Dowager Duchess de Valero, SuperSatanic, Sanjuro la Dame sans Camélias, Snow White and the Seven Pygmies, Chug-a-Lug, and the Divinely Malign were just now arriving on a Number 132 bus), Orfelina begged for mercy—she pleaded with them to give her twenty-four hours to come up with the two thousand pesos. At that, the entire troupe moved into the Skunk’s room to await developments—including the yummy teenager from Sports and Recreation, who that night screwed the entire group, bringing on such resounding sighs and moans that Orfelina’s husband, condemned to washing up the dishes, almost died of envy.

  That night, as (we repeat) the athletic young twink screwed Skunk in a Funk and her entire entourage, Orfelina, two of her offspring, and her obedient husband made a sweep of Miramar and sacked all the mansions abandoned by their owners. They then held an auction, at which they sold off mattresses, sets of china, statues, windows, doors, mirrors, toilets, and other bath accessories to the highest bidder. People say that even Fifo attended the auction, and that he bought a marble bathtub and a huge mirror that would be perfect for his orgies.

  And so, my dear, the next day Orfelina was back with a pair of shiny swim fins and the two thousand pesos in a brand-new (stolen) purse. On an Underwood typewriter which Orfelina had also stolen (and which of course went to Skunk in a Funk), the negotiating team drew up a document stating that “in return for the permanent transfer of one of his rooms in the Hotel Monserrate to Sr. Gabriel Fuentes, a.k.a. Reinaldo Arenas, a.k.a. Skunk in a Funk, Sr. Rubén Valentín Díaz Marzo receives the amount of two thousand pesos, in liquid assets.” And “to that effect,” everyone present, including Orfelina herself and the Dying Mother, affixed his or her or his/her signature as witness. As for Skunk in a Funk and Rubén Valentín Díaz Marzo, the Areopagite, they signed in the spaces marked for the “in acceptance of” and “duly agreed.” And at that, the entourage, with the swim fins and the Underwood, and the money tucked in the warm bosom of Beba Carriles, set off for the Hotel Monserrate, where lived the great majority of those persons who for many years or several hours had been the friends or acquaintances of Skunk in a Funk.

  Once Skunk had moved in, Beba gave the Areopagite a thousand pesos.

  “There’s a thousand missing,” said the little thug.

  “No there’s not,” said Beba. “Read the document you signed.”

  “It says right here that I’m supposed to receive ‘two thousand pesos in liquid assets.’ ”

  “Oh, right,” said Beba. “I gave you a thousand, and I’ll give you the rest right now.” And she went to her room and came back with a bucket full of slops that she threw in the Areopagite’s face.

  “A thousand pesos in bills. And another thousand in liquid assets. Count it, you’ll see it’s all there.”

  Rubén could hardly protest, since he’d signed the document himself.

  That night almost all the tenants of the Hotel Monserrate were invited by Beba Carriles and the Areopagite to dinner at the Peking Restaurant. Mahoma gave a speech welcoming Skunk in a Funk “to our unique residential property, the Hotel Monserrate.” And the next day Padre Gastaluz brought his silver aspergillum to Gabriel’s room and sprinkled holy water in all the corners.

  As we said—or maybe we didn’t, so we’ll say it now—Rubén Valentín Díaz Marzo, the Areopagite, was a well-known miscreant who, after his parents had fled to the United States, had sold their apartment under the ruse of a “permuta”—that peculiarly Cuban tradition of trading property that one doesn’t own (the State owns everything) in order to be able to move out of one place and into another—and wound up living in a two-room suite in the Hotel Monserrate. Rubén lived in one of the rooms and he methodically sold the other one. By the time of our story he’d already sold it at least fifteen times to the poor people in Cuba who have no place to live—which is practically everybody. The Areopagite would charge the “buyers” one, two, or three thousand pesos and then legally throw them out of the room—because in Cuba, my dear, nobody can buy a house, or an apartment, or practically anything, because everything is in the hands of Fifo the almighty. So after Rubén Valentín Díaz Marzo had bilked the buyer and spent the money, he’d throw ’im out in the street. Since it was illegal to buy a place to live, and Fifo punished that crime with all the severity he was capable of—which was plenty—the person who’d been conned had only two alternatives: give up the room or go to jail.

  So not surprisingly, after a month in his room Skunk in a Funk was visited one afternoon by the Areopagite, who knocked very politely on the interconnecting door.

  The Skunk invited him in, and the Areopagite informed him very courteously that he was to vacate the premises immediately, since he was the legitimate owner of same. “You,” he whispered confidentially to Skunk in a Funk, “have no title to this room.”

  “What do you mean I have no title to this room?” replied Skunk in a Funk. “I most certainly do!”

  “Then perhaps you would be so kind as to show it to me,” said the Areopagite with the most excruciating politeness.

  “But of course. Right away,” replied the steaming queen, who opened a drawer in the kitchenette, pulled out a very well sharpened butcher knife about a foot and a half long, and showed it to the Areopagite, saying at the same time in the suavest and most delicate of voices, “My dear, here is the title to my room. The next time you ask to see it, you can be sure I’ll give it to you and you’ll never mislay it again.”

  Skunk in a Funk’s eyes were so icy-cold, so filled with rage, and the look that gazed upon the Areopagite was so clearly that of a man who has seen every hell and therefore no longer fears any, that their gleam—and the gleam of the knife blade—persuaded Rubén Valentín Díaz Marzo, a.k.a. the Areopagite, that he’d sold his room for the last time.

  And from that moment on, the Areopagite became an unconditional admirer of Skunk in a Funk. And also his confidant.

  A TONGUE TWISTER (15)

  Smack-dab in the middle of the synagogue, undercover cop Gogo, going incognito as Chug-a-Lug the unglamorous, glommed on the long glabrous organ of a Galápagos tortoise, gobbled it down hungrily, smacked his lips, licked his chops, and subsequently stepped into the toilet, where he gargled noisily.

  “Gonococcus,” he gurgled, grinning girlishly.

  For Miss Chug-a-Lug

  FORBIDDEN COSTUMES

  The success of the exhibit of Clara Mortera’s paintings was so overwhelming that although she had refused to sell the pictures in her hole, she did take in substantial entrance fees. With that money, Clara applied herself with great dedication to the design and production of a vast and extraordinary collection of costumes—gowns, masks, shoes, and getups of all kinds that she planned to exhibit during Carnival at the Gala Forbidden Costumes Contest. Fifo, in honor of the great night, had given special permission for the contest—which otherwise would, naturally, have been forbidden. I mean, duh. Of course there was always the possibility that the contest really was forb
idden and was just a snare for the unwary, in which case Clara might very well wind up in jail. Her costumes would be so irreverent, so crushing, so real, that should the contest be a trap, for her there would almost certainly be neither clemency nor mercy. (Even Fifo himself was going to be caricatured!) But even so, Clara felt that she couldn’t not make the costumes. This work was the complement, the other face, of her great exhibit of paintings. And so Clara Mortera, confident of victory in the contest, began to confect the most astonishing gowns and suits and headware and masks—which she herself would don the night of the Grand Carnival.

  THE AREOPAGITE’S STORY

  The story of Rubén Valentín Díaz Marzo, the Areopagite, like the story of every petty criminal, is a pathetic one. When he was a little boy, if his parents wanted to screw without him around they would just throw him out of the house, so the poor little thing would have to sit out on the porch and listen to his parents’ moaning—or more often, the racket they made as they slapped and yelled terrible insults at each other. As a teenager, while his mother was in bed with one of the neighbors (his father would be away on militia duty), Rubén was raped on the porch by a vagrant, then by a black man, and then—horrors!—by an old hag with huge tits who practically suffocated him not only with her tits but with her cunt as well, since she sat on Rubén’s face and made the poor thing eat beaver-pie. Then when he was a young man his parents fled to the United States, leaving him behind; since he was of military age, it was against the law for him to leave the country. And it was that same law that forced him into Obligatory Military Service, where in less than a month he’d been passed from hand to hand (i.e., raped) by his entire platoon, including the lieutenant and the head of the Political Section. Terrified and half dead, reeling from this dreadful experience, Rubén escaped from the camp and negotiated the permuta that we mentioned earlier, which left him not only swindled (because he never received the money that was coming to him) but thrown into the world to suffer even further outrages in his two-room “suite” in the Hotel Monserrate—for there, Mahoma, SuperSatanic, Coco Salas, Mayra the Mare, and all the other aging whores in the building immediately forced Rubén Valentín Díaz Marzo to screw them. Even one of Fifo’s foreign spies, who came into Cuba on a diplomatic passport and had an unbelievable potbelly, commanded the young man to “take her.” And to top off the humiliation, the spy, who signed her name “Anastasia Filipovna,” turned out to be a military officer in drag.