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

by Reinaldo Arenas

  But little by little, all the inhabitants of this island decided, individually, that they alone should enjoy these beauties. They all began scheming to possess the entire island for themselves, to take over the best land for themselves, to live in the most luxurious house even if everyone else had to live on the street. In their colossal egotism, the prima ballerina refused to allow anyone else to become a prima ballerina, the great poet silenced all the other good poets, and the musicians wouldn’t let anybody sing or dance to any music that they themselves didn’t make. And as if all that were not enough, they all used every trick they had up their respective sleeves to corner for themselves or their families or their close friends all the public buildings in the city and all the most important positions. The city became a sea of inaccessible towers and walled mansions. Among the most prominent citizens—who all had remarkable criminal minds—so fierce was the struggle to take over the island that soon from among their ranks there emerged a sort of supercriminal, the offspring of generations of criminals, and with his own band of criminals he shut out (or wiped out) the other criminals, so that after a while he was able to proclaim himself the only criminal. He quickly moved to take over all the beaches, all the land, and all the cities, and he forced the great ballerina, the great poet, the great singers and orchestras to dance, play, and sing only for him.

  A TONGUE TWISTER (18)

  Me!—I’m no kin to Guillén, that hyena whose tendencies to malfeasance and heinous treason are so fiendish, so deep-seated that I feel they’re in the genes. Oh, Guillén, a queen who would be king, unlike others, for instance Arenas, is seen as a winner and his treason and malfeasance have remained secret, but if I were he—or is it him?—I’d seek quarantine in China or even Indonesia, somewhere Asian, because if Fifo gets wind of his evil machinations, there’ll be revenge—Guillén will wind up in a hyena roundup and be eased under the guillotine.

  For Nicolás Guillotina

  THE CONFESSION OF H. PUNTILLA

  In the immense Hall of Retractations, all was in readiness. The guests had once again taken their seats. Fifo was still wearing his impressive dress uniform spangled with stars, with a fatigue cap on his head and an Übercap on top of that one, and on top of the supercap the olive branch so long that it reached almost to the floor. He also still had on the long red cape and knee boots. H. Puntilla was onstage. Nicolás Guillotina took out his papers again and began to read what might be taken to be an introduction of the alleged traitor.

  “Dear friends,” began the famous poet and rumba dancer, “we are gathered together here today . . .”

  But he got no further because just then, at a signal from the master of ceremonies, the diligent midgets produced enormous trumpets and played a fanfare and Paula Amanda stepped forward to announce that the president of the Spanish Senate wished to bestow upon Fifo the highest distinction awarded by the Spanish government. The president of the Spanish Senate advanced across the stage with the careful movements and pained expression of a man who for many years has been suffering the most terrible hemorrhoids. And he came to the imposing figure of Fifo and awarded him the medal. But so nervous was the poor devil that as he bestowed the medal he stuck Fifo with the pin. “Fascist asshole jackanapes” were the words of thanks that Fifo spoke to the hemorrhoid sufferer.

  The diligent midgets blew their trumpets again and Paula Amanda announced that Avellaneda would now come up on the stage to read a sonnet to Fifo.

  Avellaneda’s immense figure, dressed head to toe in black, slowly began to climb the steps to the stage; she was followed by her literary agent, Miss Karment Valcete. So slowly did these ladies ascend the steps that while we wait for them to take their places we can break away for a couple of minutes to comment on the state of euphoria that Fifo was now in. And for good reason, we might add, because everything about this celebration was going swimmingly, not only with respect to the arts and letters but also financially and politically. The Prime Minister of Canada had signed a pledge to Fifo for a loan of more than a hundred million dollars. An even bigger loan had been promised by the Viceroy of Santo Domingo, and the President of Venezuela had given a speech in which he maintained that every country in the world should annex Fifo’s republic. “We might as well,” concluded this little tropical Machiavelli, “since soon the world will be but a single monolithic state—Fifoland. And I believe that it is better to sign a peace accord with ink than with our own blood. . . .” When the president of Venezuela finished his speech, Fifo presented him with a package containing a million dollars in hundred-dollar bills. Unbeknownst to the president, however, the package also contained an almost invisible but extremely powerful time bomb set to explode as the president’s plane was flying over the Gulf of Mexico, because Fifo’s secret informants (among them, the unspeakable E. Manetta) had informed him that the president had also received a check from the United States. . . . But that’s all the time we have now, since Avellaneda is just stepping up on the stage with her literary agent. Let’s go back to the auditorium and see what happens next. . . .

  When those two enormous women mounted the stage where Fifo was awaiting them, many people in the audience feared they would trigger an earthquake. If we include the two women and Fifo, there were more than four thousand pounds of flesh on the stage, and if to that we add the considerable bulk of Nicolás Guillotina and H. Puntilla, who were also on stage, one can see that the fears of the audience were not altogether unfounded. But unaware of the ripples of anxiety she was causing, Avellaneda advanced toward the center of the proscenium and announced that she would read a sonnet dedicated to a man of truly heroic proportions. Fifo of course thought the sonnet was dedicated to him, and he bowed his head in grateful appreciation. But when Avellaneda, who was wearing a laurel crown that Raúl Kastro had lent her for a few minutes, began to read her sonnet, it turned out to be about George Washington—the very antithesis of Fifo! I mean, Washington was an honest-to-goodness hero! When she came to the end of the sonnet, Fifo, to all appearances unfazed, presented Avellaneda with a red rose and gave her and her literary agent a kiss on the cheek. The midgets played their cornets or clarinets or whatever the hell they were, and Paula Amanda, in yet another long formal gown (this one with a lovely bell-shaped skirt), announced that now H. Puntilla would begin his long-awaited second retractation. Avellaneda and Karment Valcete returned to their seats beside H. Puntilla’s wife, Miss Baká Kozá Malá, who was holding a machine gun in her lap. Fifo retired to his presidential box, and the spectacle commenced.

  Nicolás Guillotina directed a look of disgust at H. Puntilla (who murmured “Thank you, professor”) and began to read from his sheaf of papers. It was a totally boring speech, full of praise for Fifo, but in the last paragraph all ears pricked up, because Guillotina said that Fifo was aware of everything that was to take place there tonight. Since H. Puntilla’s confession was supposed to be “spontaneous,” those words had to be taken as a snide poke at the entire event. And that was, in fact, how Fifo took them; he ordered his most loyal midgets to cut off both of Nicolás Guillotina’s legs (“Guillotine him! Guillotine him!” were the exact words he used) and leave him to die of double galloping gangrene. The great bulldog finished his speech without looking at H. Puntilla (who once again said, “Thank you, professor”) and left the stage to go sit beside Avellaneda. Then Baká Kozá Malá, brandishing her machine gun, called out to her husband—“Talk!”—and H. Puntilla began his “spontaneous” retractation. This statement followed the guidelines set forth in a document entitled “First-Degree Retractation,” a model which had with great foresight been drafted more than thirty years earlier by E. Manetta and Edith García Bachaca; it was long, typically bureaucratic statement in which the retractor was to confess to having committed all possible crimes of lèse-patria and treason against Fifo and plead that as an act of contrition he or she be executed by firing squad. The document ended with a cry of “¡Patria o muerte! ¡Venceremos!”

  But to that Manichean/Manettian
document, H. Puntilla added certain touches of his own. For instance, while he was denouncing himself as a traitor and counterrevolutionary he also denounced most of his friends, among them Paula Amanda and César Lapa (the fiery queen of the mulattoes) and even his own wife, who, hearing her name, quickly whipped out the machine gun and fired off a wild barrage that hit a gigantic statue of Karl Marx that stood to the right of the stage and blew it to smithereens. Thinking (as who wouldn’t?) that he was actually being executed by the firing squad from which this time not even a retractation would save him, H. Puntilla began to scream uncontrollably and, as proof of his loyalty to the regime, recite the three poems to Spring that he had composed (or so he said) while he was confined in the cells at State Security. At that, Baká Kosá Malá fired off another barrage that brought down the monumental statue of Lenin that stood stage left. H. Puntilla gave a bloodcurdling shriek and screamed “Don’t kill me! Don’t kill me! I’m sorry, I’m really, really, sorry for all my crimes. I love and revere Fifo—desperately! And if the Comandante of the Dawn of Revolution will come up on the stage, I’ll get down on my knees and beg his forgiveness. Please, Comandante, come up here with me!”1

  Still wearing his long red cape, Fifo bounded up onto the stage with his three famous bounds. H. Puntilla shuffled over to him on his knees, bowed low, and begged the Maximum Leader to spit on him and kick him—which the Maximum Leader, one hand grasping the cape and the other steadying the monumental Übercap, immediately did. The hall exploded with deafening applause. Then H. Puntilla asked the Leader to urinate on him, and instantly a stream of urine so powerful that it seemed to issue from a fire hose bathed the genuflecting body. And again the hall erupted, but this time the applause was even more deafening than before. H. Puntilla then lowered his pants and begged Fifo to give his naked buttocks a kick, and immediately Fifo violently kicked the poet’s ass, inspiring a round of applause so thunderous that it threatened to bring the roof down. But H. Puntilla was still weeping, and now he was pleading with Fifo to please, please, ram his foot, boot and all, up his ass—and getting down on all-fours, H. Puntilla presented his black and apparently bottomless asshole. The Maximum Leader seemed to like that idea. He walked over to the far side of the stage and (aided by the diligent midgets) removed all his clothes, leaving on only his boots, the long red cape, and the magnificent hood with its olive branch. Then, rocking back and forth for a good start, he leaped—all the way from one side of the stage to the other—and planted one of his booted feet square up H. Puntilla’s ass. Puntilla gave a piercing scream of pleasure, louder even than the renewed applause that rocked the hall. “What a fabulous evening,” purred Sr. Torquesada.

  The problem came when Fifo tried to pull his boot out of the poet’s ass. He couldn’t seem to free it from that sphincter that was squeezing the boot like the suckers on an octopus’s tentacle or the pincer of a giant crab. More than sixty-nine midgets clambered up onto the stage and started pulling on H. Puntilla, but they couldn’t extricate the Leader’s foot. Finally, one of the midgets (the supervisor midget, apparently) untied the boot, which left the boot in the backside quicksand and Fifo with a bootless foot, but free. And the boot remained inside H. Puntilla’s bowels. Folding his long red cape around him, Fifo descended from the stage to wild applause. The smell of shit that came from his foot was dreadful, but the diligent midgets immediately set about licking it clean. (In this they were aided by Mario Bendetta, Eduardo Alano, Juana Bosch, and the Marquesa de Macondo.)

  Now H. Puntilla was standing in the very center of the stage. He stripped off all his clothes and with great pride showed the audience his bulging belly with the outline of the Commander in Chief’s size-thirteen boot. I’ll tell you, my dear, the man’s face had never displayed such an expression of joy—at last he had been impregnated by the Maximum Leader’s hated yet infinitely beloved boot. But H. Puntilla was always an extremely ambitious man, as you know, so once again he begged the Maximum Leader to come up on stage, and this time bury his second boot in his ass. That way he would bear within his womb the impress of the greatest man of this century—those were the very words he spoke, and he was instantly echoed by Bosch, still licking the Leader’s shit-covered foot. The Comandante, beet-red with rage at the stench of shit, rose from his seat and reached the stage in only two large bounds—and that was with one foot missing a shoe! “Now I’m really going to screw this faggot,” he murmured to himself as, rocking back and forth to get up a good head of steam, he flew through the air—cape flying, body naked, booted foot extended—and landed, his boot sinking not just up to the knee but all the way up to the thigh. H. Puntilla gave an indescribable shriek. The audience gave a standing ovation. But this time it was really hard for the Commander in Chief to extricate himself from that anal bog. Even though H. Puntilla could hardly breathe, his sphincter maintained a death grip on that foot. The diligent midgets tugged desperately on the poet, but all their efforts were in vain. Finally they called on Avellaneda and Karment Valcete to lend a hand. The two women lumbered up onto the stage again, and Avellaneda took H. Puntilla, Valcete took Fifo, and they each began to pull. H. Puntilla was still howling in pleasure, Fifo was muttering curses, and the audience was going wild. The two gigantic sweaty women huffed and puffed and tugged and pulled, but they could not separate the two bodies. They were almost ready to give up when a sound without parallel in the history of terraqueous sounds (and there have been plenty of them) split the rear curtains in the theater and shattered windowpanes and chandeliers. The sound was louder than fifteen torpedoed submarines, the detonation of a gigantic mine in the Bartlett Trench, the suicidal self-detonation of a whale in the Antarctic Ocean, and an atomic explosion in the Japan Sea, all at once. And it seemed to be coming from the Aquarium Theater!

  In a single tremendous tug, Fifo pulled his half-body from the poet’s ass (causing the poet to swoon into the arms of Avellaneda) and, followed by a crowd of guests and the ubiquitous diligent midgets, ran to the aquarium. There, he was halted in his tracks at a spectacle like none any human had ever seen before. Behind the plate-glass wall of the aquarium, and before an audience stretched out in the comfort of their seats, Bloodthirsty Shark and Miss Mayoya were writhing in the throes of passionate, violent copulation.

  SKUNK IN A FUNK

  Throughout Fifo’s party, Skunk in a Funk had taken part in the festivities with real abandon, though also with wisdom and cunning. She intrigued, entertained, enchanted; her conversation ranged from the most trivial (a play on words, for example) to the most transcendental (a proof of the existence of the Devil). But which one was it that was there that night? Which one was it that now, shimmying and shaking and dancing through the delirious Carnival, was looking for Tatica so she could kill him? Was it Skunk in a Funk, the screaming queen? Was it Gabriel, the farm boy, the country bumpkin from the hills of Holguín? Was it Reinaldo, the ill-fated and forever luckless writer? We cannot be sure which of the three was there that night representing the other doubles who, inspired by the example of Ñica, had fled the country years earlier across the Strait of Florida. But whichever one it was, s/he embodied all the absent ones to perfection. So well, in fact, that however long, however deeply we have investigated, we have not been able to discover which one it was who attended the Carnival festivities in representation of his/her true and authentic doubles. Who was Skunk in a Funk actually representing? Who was she being represented by?

  A TONGUE TWISTER (19)

  Lulled by Liberace’s “Clair de lune,” Lala, Lapique’s loyal ally, a lusty lollapalooza of a lass, was lolling languorously on her chaise longue in a long lovelorn lethargy when, looking up, she saw Lilliputian libertine Lulu, whose licorice lollipop she began to lustily lick.

  How long did Lala lustily lick Lilliputian Lulu’s licorice lollipop?

  And did the Lilliputian libertine Lulu like having her lollipop licked by Lala the lecherous lollapalooza? Loved it!

  For Lala the lollapalooza

  THAT EARTHSHA
KING COUPLING

  For many years, all the queens on the Island, including those who were apparently on Fifo’s side (or even his informants), had gleefully whispered among themselves that Bloodthirsty Shark, like all sharks, was a top. Many of the queens who had dived down and gnawed away at the Island’s undermooring had seen how the male gnawers who were caught by Bloodthirsty Shark or the other, smaller sharks would not only be torn to pieces by those creatures but also cruelly raped.

  One day, a group of imprisoned ogresses sitting on the side of a dam in a concentration camp formed a committee and decided that the only way to eliminate Bloodthirsty Shark was through love. Yes, one of the most beautiful queens on the Island had to be trained in the art of seduction so he could seduce Bloodthirsty Shark. The choice fell on Miss Mayoya. This mulatto-skinned beauty seemed to have discovered the secret of eternal youth; his neck was long and perfect, her mouth was ripe and sensual, his eyes were green, and her hair fell in ringlets as gleaming as her eyes. And so the wisest queens on Fifo’s staff—queens such as Ho’ Guerra, Capitán Pachuca, Miss Güé Güevavara—spent hours, days, weeks instructing the beautiful fairy in the art of seducing sharks. And because they were all high officials in the regime, these queens could bring back from Paris all the perfume, sex oils, makeup, shampoo, and hair spray imaginable to make Mayoya even more irresistible to the carnivorous sea creature. Mayoya, perfectly oiled, perfumed, and dressed in nothing but a sequined bikini (which concealed a silver dagger), would spend long hours on a rock beside the ocean, dancing, swaying his hips, and generally enticing Bloodthirsty Shark, who would swim back and forth, snorting, before the glistening beauty on the beach. It was not long before Bloodthirsty Shark began to court, or at least strut his stuff for, Mayoya, who went on dancing on her rock beside the sea, the long silver dagger at his waist. Bloodthirsty Shark would emerge from the bottom of the sea and begin to frolic about on the surface. At that, the queen would swing his hips even more seductively, toss her ringleted hair, and neigh as beguilingly as she could. The great ocean creature would swim on its back, shoot up out of the water like a jet-propelled missile, touch the clouds, and in a tumult of spray dive straight down into the water again, directly before the dancing queen. Clearly, Bloodthirsty Shark had fallen in love with Mayoya. Oh, but something unplanned had happened—the dishy Mayoya had fallen in love with the great shark, too. . . . And yet, being a family-values kind of queen, she always set principles before passion. The shark, however, had been trained by Fifo, who had no principles, and within the most rigid antifaggot upbringing, and though it would often screw a male victim (who would die a double death, of pleasure and shark bite simultaneously), its first obligation, as we have seen, was to kill the traitor. A bloodthirsty shark can never forgive a traitor, much less a faggot whose very nature it was to be a double traitor. That was the implacable law in which the shark had been brought up—not only by Fifo but also by Isabel Monal and all the other distinguished professors of dialectical materialism. Clearly, then, between the love the shark felt for Mayoya and its conscience, there yawned an unbridgeable chasm. And above that yawning chasm the desperate shark, member erect, would dance. . . .