Grab a Snake by the Tail

by Leonardo Padura

  Sebastián and Juan, who were full of brotherly love for each other, hugged and hugged the morning when the cousin, alongside other countrymen, boarded the boat whose prow pointed towards a wealthy future. Juan waited months for a letter from Sebastián, but never heard from him again. Then he started to make enquiries via all the chinos who had relatives in San Francisco, or in any United States city, but nobody knew a Sebastián who also went by the name of Fu Chion Tang. It was only around 1940 that Juan finally discovered the fate of his last known living relative: all the Chinese who had embarked on that voyage had frozen to death in the boat’s cold storage and, rather than go to the United States, the ship had sailed towards Central America and the captain had ordered the freezer compartments to be turned up to maximum. The frozen corpses of the thirty-two chinos had been thrown overboard like blocks of ice into the Gulf of Honduras, after being stripped of the money they had managed to hide and the few valuables they were carrying …

  With no news from Sebastián, Juan had returned to Havana in 1936. Thanks to a friend he found a job in a grocery store and soon after met and fell in love with a jet-black woman with hard tits and an ass that was inconceivable in the Far East. Chinese Juan and black Micaela married in 1945 and a few years after, when they’d almost given up hope, life rewarded them and they became parents to a healthy, beautiful child. From then on, Juan worked up to sixteen hours a day behind the store’s counter only so his daughter could live, not like a wealthy girl, but at least like a human being, and in the future could be an educated, cultured woman, with a fate different to that of her father and her family, whether on the black or chino side, worn down by servitude and centuries of slavery. That’s why in 1958 Juan left the block where he lived with his wife and, with the help of the money he’d been saving to go and meet his cousin Sebastián or for that permanent dream of a return to China, he picked up his goods and chattels, crossed the frontiers of Chinatown and rented a house on Calla Maloja, the least violent part of the city centre, in a modest building with the luxury of two large windows that looked out over the street, the place where Patricia had lived from the age of two.

  Mario Conde and Sergeant Manuel Palacios let old Juan Chion do the talking. They’d never heard him come out with such a flow, and hearing him tell his stories was a singular privilege granted them because the chino had finally embraced his new status as an auxiliary policeman. The old man didn’t comment on why he had been dressed and ready for them when they reached his house, but Conde knew that Patricia (Where has that woman got to? Why the hell doesn’t she call me?) must have influenced his decision. Chion would do anything for her. He dotes on her, thought the lieutenant as he resumed the thread of his story in the car driven by Manolo and heading to Chinatown.

  That was where Juan Chion had first lived when he arrived in Cuba, like almost all Cantonese. His first job had been washing pots in the Golden Lion, the inn run by Li Pei, where maestro Cuang Cong Fen had taught him to prepare the most exquisite dishes for every palate in the world. Beef cooked in sweet and sour sauce, with mango pieces, sesame seeds and pineapple chunks, for example. But the Chinatown that Juan Chion’s reminiscences were beginning to depict wasn’t at all like the dirty, gloomy streets along which the three men now walked: all that was left of the physical splendour of those streets were their ancient names (Zanja, in honour of the aqueduct that first brought water to the city; Rayo, after the lightning that killed two blacks), the Chinese characters on the balcony of an occasional family business or cooperative, and a degree of indestructible grime. This Barrio Chino was dying; the one that Juan had known in 1930 was alive and kicking. You didn’t make much money, but in its heart you had all the good and evil pleasures of life on hand – opium and mah-jong, theatres and whores, secret societies and the lottery, parties and fights, gangs and usurers, cheap taverns and restaurants with private rooms had romanced Juan Chion, and Conde thought that all that remained of the spirit of a place that the old man’s words suggested was so colourful and lively was a whiff of its elusive, pungent aroma and the memories of a few chinos who were a dying breed and as old and ornery as Juan Chion or the late Pedro Cuang. It was obvious that they were crossing a sad, battered, shabby, moribund place in the centre of a city that shared its tragic destiny. Then, as so often, Conde felt an attack of nostalgia powered by an energy he’d never witnessed. I would like to have seen that, he thought. But I’d never have wanted to experience it, least of all like these chinos.

  “So if there was so much going on, why did you go to live outside the area?” he asked the old man.

  Juan had wanted Patricia to grow up in a house outside Chinatown, because at the end of the day it wasn’t a good place to be if you wanted to make something of your life, and he had a dream for his daughter’s future. The Barrio was like Canton but wasn’t Canton, and the Chinese lived poorly. They were only interested in earning enough money to go back to China at some point, although in the end they never would. But it was obvious that to earn money, enough real money, you couldn’t just work in a grocery store, a laundry or a fruit and vegetable store; that was why gambling, drugs, prostitution, fraud and a horrific Chinese–Cuban mafia had mushroomed, and Juan wanted to be well away from all that … Besides, after what had happened to Sebastián and since he had become a father, he no longer wanted to go anywhere.

  “Me diffe’lent kind of chino, no?”

  “So why?” asked Conde, trying to get the most he could from the old man’s torrent of words, although he immediately grasped he’d got it all wrong.

  “Because perhaps chinos have same eyes, but we not all same … And that’s enough for now, I not the killer,” answered Juan Chion, and this time he didn’t smile.

  “All right, all right,” the lieutenant conceded. “But just tell me one thing: did you find out the meaning of the circle with the two arrows? Now that you’ve mentioned it, it sounds like the Chinese mafia, right?”

  Juan Chion shook his head energetically.

  “No, it doesn’t, that’s why it so st’lange, Conde. You know, seems like the stamp of San Fan Con, the Chinese saint, the g’leat captain, ’light? But San Fan Con don’t kill that way, he use sword and cut off head. Let’s go see my f’liend F’lancisco, the man who know most about San Fan Con.” His smile faded for a moment. “But don’t torture him with police stuff … F’lancisco is in ve’ly bad shape and mustn’t be upset … And, Conde, get this in head, chinos aren’t little ants.”

  Mario Conde was trying to catch his breath and adapt to the all-enveloping darkness of the long staircase to the top floor where the Lung Con Cun Sol Society was based when he saw Juan Chion had reached the top and was giving a man a hug. Their Cantonese words were an enigmatic mumble, then Patricia’s father introduced them in Spanish as colleagues of his daughter.

  “Please to see you, F’lancisco Chiú,” said the old man, and bowed to them in the style of Juan Chion.

  In the semi-darkness Conde thought he caught a glimpse of Francisco laughing as well. He was very old, no doubt older than Juan Chion, and skinnier than the late Pedro Cuang, with a yellow tint to his skin that Conde thought originated from his liver rather than his ethnicity. He was clearly a very sick man.

  “Pancho Pat’licita’s godfather. From same hamlet in Canton, and we worked in same g’locer’s store,” added Juan Chion, who made another bow before raising his hand to Francisco’s shoulder. “And me godfather of Panchito, Pancho’s son. We compad’les, as you Cubans say …”

  Conde and Manolo smiled dutifully and followed the old men into the Society’s main room. Two long rows of empty, dusty wooden chairs with shabby wickerwork lined the sides of that sizeable space. Towards the back a small square table preserved the decisive finale to a game of dominoes that, judging by the layers of soot, must have finished several years ago. Francisco pointed to some armchairs and walked to a large window with shutters that were falling apart, and finally they had light. A sunbeam crossed the dust and abandon and fell on th
e centre of the room, and Conde and Manolo scrutinized that place that had stopped in time, as they could see from the Selecciones del Reader’s Digest diary opened at 31 December 1960 between the luminous drawing of a peaceful lake at the foot of a snow-capped mountain, and an Alka-Seltzer clock that had also come to a halt at some remote hour. So twenty years are nothing, as the tango goes, I guess? And thirty are on their way to being something? Conde wondered as he contemplated that set from an English mystery film and noticed how his hands had been blackened by the dust of lost time: that society was as moribund as the district that had fostered it, to which chinos had ceased to come after the now historic year of 1949, when the great revolution that followed the great march led by the Great Leader had closed the frontiers of that large country with a barrier more solid and impenetrable than the Great Wall of imperial times.

  In the meantime, Juan Chion and his fellow countryman had started talking in Cantonese again. It was a prolonged hum, reinforced by successive nods and a few broad, gentle hand gestures as all-encompassing as a conjuror’s. More than once those hands and their Chinese shadows met in the air, touched, shook and then resumed their languorous dance, as if words weren’t enough and they needed that cutaneous communication.

  “You ever heard of San Fan Con, Conde?” Manolo whispered in his ear.

  “I think so. When my grandfather said that somebody was more evil than San Fan Con, it was because they were really evil. But I don’t know where the hell he got it from, because he didn’t have a drop of Chinese blood in him.”

  “So he’s an evil saint? Saintly and evil?”

  “I guess so … You know these chinos …”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Isn’t the smell getting to you?”

  “It smells Chinese, right?”

  Conde nodded, accepting Manolo’s verdict: of course, it was that vague but unmistakable smell they’d defined the previous afternoon as a chino smell. And he also noticed that the humid heat of May was absent from that anachronistic place: the unreal atmosphere created a coolness in the air, as if they were miles from the cauldron of the street they’d just walked down.

  “Did anyone tell you in the end if Pedro Cuang had money or knew people who were dealing in coke?”

  “No, Conde, nobody mentioned that or anything else. It’s a bastard. I don’t understand these chinos: the bastards act as if they don’t understand me and I — Did you hear that?”

  A noise reached them from the back of the Society, sounding like a piece of furniture being moved carefully, though it still squeaked slightly. Conde leaned to one side and saw a man’s shadow on the wall walking towards a square of light and crossing it.

  “Somebody’s there, and I reckon he jumped out of a window,” he informed the chinos, and wasn’t sure how to act.

  “Well, nobody there,” smiled Francisco Chiú, adding, as he broadened his smile, “Oh, it was only a kitten …”

  Conde had no choice but to repay one smile with another: if he wanted his help, he couldn’t afford an argument with Francisco Chiú over the size of that bipedal cat.

  Juan Chion and Francisco stood up and Patricia’s father addressed them: “Let’s go see San Fan Con.”

  Conde thought, No, I won’t be shocked, even if I see San Fan Con in person, and followed the old men.

  Another darker, dustier staircase led to the Society’s second floor. Francisco led the way, far too slowly. Juan Chion followed, and his firmer steps sent up a constant grey mist. Conde felt his eyes become irritated. He was dying to ask questions, but held back. When he returned to Headquarters, he’d go and have a word with Lieutenant Patricia and their boss, Major Rangel. Why the hell does it always have to be me? he was thinking as Manolo whispered in his ear: “There’s a window and it looks over another terrace … That’s where the cat jumped from.”

  Francisco opened a door at the top of the stairs and a faint light shone down. The door shut behind him and the pitch-black returned.

  “Why all the mystery, Juan?” asked Conde, trying to see the expression on the old man’s face. “What on earth does seeing San Fan Con mean?”

  “You see now, you see now. Ve’ly f’lightened?”

  “No, not in the least …” he said, looking for a cigarette in his shirt pocket, which he put between his lips before he heard the old man say:

  “Don’t light.”

  Conde smiled. He either smiled or ran out, he thought, when a stronger light shone. Francisco moved out of the doorway and Manolo and Conde followed Juan Chion into the Lung Con Cun Sol Society’s holy of holies.

  “Policeman never been here before,” Francisco informed them and went off to open another window, adding: “I do this for goddaughter, Pat’licita …”

  The light suddenly flooded in. An altar? was Conde’s first thought. It looked like one, but it wasn’t, although it had two parts, like a main altar and a smaller one for the purpose of worship. The piece that could be classed as the latter had been carved from dark wood and planed smooth with utmost care, first by a consummate artist and now by woodworm, ants and tropical humidity that had eaten away part of the lovely piece. Tall porcelain vases stood on either side; profusely decorated and gilt-edged, they contained bunches of dried flowers. Beyond them, bronze censers – he imagined for burning incense or aromatic herbs – rose up, with feet shaped like snakes’ heads and crowned by rearing lion-dogs that bared their teeth and tried to look ferocious, although their effeminate faces rendered them pathetic. At the centre of the piece, supported by two plaited wooden columns and at the back of the section that might be the main altar, was an embroidered silk tapestry, framed by the wood’s most elaborate arabesques: it represented the image of four fat mandarins with long moustaches and ponytails who were talking to each other, perhaps discussing the fate of an entire nation. The face of the mandarin in the centre, whom the perspective placed slightly to the fore, was a bright red, as if it had just emerged from an oven.

  The two chinos, standing in front of the altar, bowed their heads three times as they did when greeting each other, and Juan took two pieces of wood from the shelf – ear-shaped and flat on one side, perhaps they were seeds – which he banged together several times while uttering a litany Conde decided was a prayer. Juan returned the pieces of wood to their place, and only then did Francisco enlighten them, pointing to the tapestry: “The one with long beard and b’light ’led face … is Cuang Con, or San Fan Con, as they call him in Cuba.”

  A circle with two arrows and four small crosses. A dead man and a dead dog. Two copper tokens similarly inscribed. A severed finger. And now the mythological hero, Cuang Con. How am I going to disentangle this Chinese puzzle? wondered Conde, as he watched Manolo’s intrigued expression. His colleague was looking at the embroidered cloth and Francisco’s mouth while his head moved from side to side like – what else? – a Chinese fan, going from the informant with the absurdly yellow complexion to the legendary mandarins embroidered on a background lit by the splendours of a dawning sun.

  The tapestry represented four captains who had become sworn brothers as a result of their military campaigns: Cuang Con, Lao Pei, Chui Chi Lon and Chui Fei. They were the princes who during the Han dynasty had founded the Great Lung Con Cun Sol Brotherhood so that forever and ever all their children, those blessed with the illustrious surnames of Lao, Cuang, Chion and Chui would be mutually protected by the divine guardianship of those fighting gods. In China and even in Havana.

  The four titans were discussing the future of the kingdom. Their enemy had kidnapped the wives of the chief and older brother, Lao Pei, thus robbing their country of its fertility and future. Without women there is no beauty, there is no world, because there isn’t even life, and Cuang Con, the most intrepid of the brothers, prepares to go to their rescue. He confronts and overcomes a thousand labours, he rides over meadows and mountains with his arm supporting a lance that weighs six hundred pounds and which only he can handle, and his cunning and courage defeat the r
ival armies; and one spring afternoon he returns with the kidnapped wives and restores hope to the country of Lao Pei. His immortal feat is inscribed in history and the hero becomes a god, and every year his descendants, before an altar like that, pay eternal homage to the man who saved their future.

  “But he wasn’t a saint, was he?” asked Conde, scratching his arms to dampen his longing for a smoke. “I mean, he wasn’t sanctified like the Catholic saints … Why is he San Fan Con?”

  Francisco’s going to laugh, the policeman thought when he finished his question.

  The chino smiled. “That happened here. He came here as Cuang Con, a g’leat captain, a mythological he’lo, but was Cubanized into San Fan Con, and as he bright red and a saint, you know, captain, blacks say he Changó,” said Francisco, still laughing, and Conde reflected again that despite the ascension performed by Francisco (which put him at the level of the great Cuang Con), he could still beat an honourable retreat: he understood less by the minute and felt ever more stupid and uncultured while at the same time suspecting that some of those laughs were mocking his innocence, credulity and ignorance. Because it had turned out that Cuang Con wasn’t just San Fan Con, but Changó, the blessed Santa Barbara, with his red cloak and sword in hand … It’s all too much, he thought.

  Meanwhile, still smiling, Francisco had taken from the mantelpiece that looked like a small altar a bamboo cane cut like a long glass. It contained some very thin rods, also made of bamboo, inscribed at the end in Indian ink with a number and some letters, which he now clattered together like maracas for concrete music. Francisco explained that Cuang Con was Lord Luck: each rod indicated a path in life, and the one that bore a circle with a cross made by two arrows was the worst path possible: the way to hell, where traitors, murderers and adulterous women went. Some people in Cuba said that was San Fan Con’s most negative sign, that a man so marked could expect every unhappiness in both worlds: of the living and the dead. As he heard that explanation, Conde felt painfully heartened: at last he understood something and, at the same time, his hunch was strengthened that the marks on Pedro Cuang’s body didn’t relate to a mere game of appearances; at the very least they indicated a path that led to that dark, dusty room belonging to the Society. Or at least it passed through that way.