Ambientes_New Queer Latino Writing

by Lazaro Lima

  I begin to greet people as I walk along. I look for you without hoping to or worrying about finding you, as you’re probably ahead of me; and it’s you that waits for me. Yet, I arrive at the cafe where we were to meet and you’re not there. Inside, an old man makes his marionette dressed like a harlequin dance in front of a table full of tourists. I can hear the tune from where I’m waiting. While the tourists talk among themselves, the marionette does pirouettes, bows, moves its hips, and smiles without stopping. I believe the tourists are making fun of the old man, but he and his marionette continue to give the show without abandoning their smiles.

  When Pardieu’s limousine stops, you still haven’t arrived. I ask myself if I should wait for you, apologize to Pardieu, or go back to look for you, but it’s absurd to go out again into that crowd that wanders from bar to bar, from show to show, and from flirtation to flirtation. The chauffeur opens the door and invites me in. The Mandarin Pardieu urges me to get in, lifting a glass. Other friends make space. I shoot one last glance toward the street; I get in to the automobile and you, a few streets down, forget about our meeting, and rapidly try to reach the corner where the young man ought to be waiting, although he simply pretends to see the river of people that come and go. You are sure that destiny sweeps you onward; deep down you welcome the surprise, the whim, the humid summer, tonight’s circumstances. You arrive at the place where, not too long ago, the young man pretended to lounge, but he’s not there either. All that’s left is the human angel statue, the thin black man painted totally white, so good at his job that he doesn’t seem to breathe, or notice your anxiety. You try to get his attention, bring him back to this world again, but the angel pretends to contemplate what’s beyond you. The tourists pose with him, taking photos, tossing money into the box at his feet. You catch on and wave a bill in front of the angel’s eyes and say:

  “Where did he go?”

  The angel changes the position of his arms slowly, like he’s learned how a robot would do it. He bends, at the brink of transmitting a divine message. You see that he has eyes marked with reddish lines that make them seem very dark. You see that drops of sweat have cracked the makeup. You feel the angel breathe.

  “The guy in a white dress,” you insist. “He was around here ten minutes ago.”

  “Vãikunta?” says the angel in an earthly voice. You have no answer. Nothing else occurs to you but to toss the dollars into the box at the foot of the winged being. “It means Heaven’s gates,” he affirms with authority.

  “Where is he now?” you ask with a hint of desperation. The angel seems like an articulating doll. He lifts his head, but his arms don’t commit to a particular direction, and you take out another bill. The spectacle attracts the attention of some people; they begin to make a circle around you. Some ask each other if the angel reads the future, like the fortune-tellers from Jackson Square. He doesn’t predict it; he indicates its course, nothing more. You follow where he’s pointing, but you only find a sea of people in constant motion. Those interested also try to guess what the secret is that the angel has revealed to you, as if it were possible for a layman’s eye to see the aura of such a wondrous feat or to hear the silence that overcomes such commotion.

  “Vãikunta,” you go demanding through the people. “Vãikunta.” You look for his name, although all around you there is only a mass of bodies. They wander around, they glide ghostly about, they dissolve into invisibility. “Vãikunta,” you say with the faith of those who repeat the prayer that guides them. “Vãikunta,” you require, knowing that no one can answer you except him, the anonymous one, the one who should materialize out of the realm of secrecy.

  But I can’t see you walking like a crazy man down Saint Peter toward Rampart. I’m arriving at the Country Club, where a man in a frock coat opens the door for us. Pardieu walks ahead, greeting, or better said, blessing the people who converse and drink in the secret salons. With his hands he seems to say: “Here I go, the great clairvoyant, and to all of you I bequeath my graces.” A moment before, he had asked me my opinion about his Mandarin suit. “You look like a television astrologer,” I answered him between laughs. “Well, as a reward for your sincerity I will honor you with a zodiac title. Tonight you will be Cancer: water, patience, family.” I stayed quiet. With Pardieu you never know; it’s best to wait for the next absurdity.

  We go on toward the back of the old mansion, pass through a door-way made of tall windows, and go out to the pool that’s not full of champagne but shines placidly beneath the night. As it should be in such circumstances, there is music though no one dances, long tables with food and bottles, people conversing in low voices. As should occur in Heaven, around the pool many young men bathe in the moonlight. Strewn about on lounge chairs, they’re absorbed in contemplating one another, ignoring the rustic reality that exists outside of their world of perfect bodies. “Look at them letting youth pass them by, Cancer,” Pardieu says to me, reading my thoughts. “Beauty is excessive and useless, but above all it’s the present. No other time matters, nor exists. It is in the present; it vanishes and invents itself all the time in the present.”

  I can’t answer him. A few friends have noticed our arrival and call everyone’s attention so as to honorably receive the Mandarin, who will be entering the state prison within a few hours. You weren’t persecuted under the sodomy laws still in existence in Louisiana; you didn’t defend noble causes, didn’t oppose the invisible hands of evil. You have been condemned for selling stolen antiques. Pardieu, how mundane! And so you take your triumphant walk around the pool, dedicating spicy looks and comments to the beautiful men on display in the lounge chairs. The conversation begins: the toasts, the well-wishes that the trip be pleasurable and not too long. “Just two years with good behavior,” jokes Pardieu. “I will have learned horticulture, to better the weed crop as soon as I get out.” Suddenly Pardieu remembers you. He asks me about you; I shrug my shoulders. How am I going to know that you’re going from one side of the street to the other, looking for a face that you have begun to idealize, that you’ve gone in and out of the bars and tobacco shops several times, any place where Vãikunta could be, the only one, the one who draws you as if he had an identifiable scent, capable of guiding you to a little store where the young man has entered to buy incense? How can I be sure that time hasn’t stopped to allow you to rake through the crowd in search of the mythical needle, the one you have found against all odds? In the half-light you see the young man in white, comparing aromas. You slowly move closer, calling him by his name. He registers you as if he knew that you were going to meet there. Outside, time has gone back to normal. Night overcomes the morning once again, and the people continue being the anonymous tumult from before. You find each other; you extend your hand to him, gently order him to read it, and to explain to you what happened in the last few minutes, the manner in which all the coincidences have converged in that instant. “Who brought me to you?” you ask. “An angel,” he responds. “Will you continue to be in my future?” you plead. “Your hand is silent. It doesn’t want to reveal any more.”

  I can’t explain to Pardieu that the two of you begin to chat, walking slowly toward the quieter parts of the French Quarter. I ignore the fact that you arrive at a red-painted shotgun house, music and murmurs escaping from the celebratory party for the full Eastern moon, as Vãikunta explains to you. To open the door you just have to push. You enter a rather long, candlelit room, with semitransparent curtains hanging from the ceiling and walls. Toward the back there’s a bookshelf and a bed. Closer to you, a young man plays a type of drum, while four women circle him, spellbound. Vãikunta asks you to leave your shoes on the little rug next to the door; he greets the rest of the visitors with familiarity and sets about perfuming the house with incense. You sit down with the women, you tell them a false name, and you drink wine with them. The women recite poems to the beat of the drum, get up to dance, caress the hair of the young man and Vãikunta, and drink from tall glasses. After an instant or an
eternity, after hearing the mystical experiences that you neither share nor believe, the women beg Vãikunta to sing. The other young man sets his drum aside and gets guitars. The two musicians start up a melody in an unknown language. Although it’s impossible to understand them, their faces relay a sentiment that you make your own, and you have a feeling it describes you. Your body starts to feel the music’s inflections and you try to repeat a word; you believe parts of that truth. You wish to ask Vãikunta where he learned to play like that. You want to hear some fabulous answer: “In Heaven, at the feet of giant gods, next to the purifying pyre, at the middle of the sacred river ….” He doesn’t answer. One of the women whispers in your ear: “In New Jersey, where he grew up.” Better not to know anymore. Suddenly the spell could break, and it could end up that Vãikunta isn’t anything more than some James or some David, some good musician from the suburbs dedicated to selling the illusion of a strange language to some naive people. “I don’t want to know,” you repeat to yourself. “I can’t know,” I say, drinking another glass and taking a break from the small talk to think of you. Pardieu has lost himself in the interior of the huge house with a few of the moon bathers, and he has now returned to continue toasting and saying goodbye to his acolytes. He has asked me if there’s no one that I like, if I haven’t decided to stop taking notes on the story to live it, as it’s not possible to live and write at the same time: the former goes first and you don’t think about it, the latter you make up and doesn’t exist except in the confines of the imagination. “You are such a good witness to your own life, Cancer,” he has told me confidently. He has had a few drinks, although I know that they never serve enough to make Pardieu lose his lucidity, his elegance, and his proper gait. “When are you going to be that protagonist, eternal spectator?” I accept the challenge with a toast, and I respond to him: “Some day after today, when we are nothing more than history.”

  Pardieu laughs, gives me a kiss that tastes like champagne, and calls everyone’s attention for another speech. He announces that he will go out through the French Quarter in a Carnival-style parade, the second line before tomorrow in preparation for preserving yesterday. The most magnificent clairvoyant decides to make his court up of the zodiac signs. Some young men bring different-colored Venetian costumes. Pardieu points at me and I step forward with my name, Cancer, toward the blue suit. He mentions eleven others and each one is dressed. We take another walk around the pool before leaving. We wait for the limos, with an abundance of alcohol, and Carnival beads and doubloons. Pardieu brings the water signs with him, chooses a few others, and sends the rest of the group to another vehicle. “I leave tomorrow, but I’ll arrive yesterday,” he whispers obsessively. I’m at the point of commenting, but I stop myself. I’ll tell you my feelings later, be it that I remember them or make them up; in the end it’s the same.

  You will also relay a story to me that’s inaccessible, although some day in our springtime walk we may pass the shotgun house and you’ll point to the place, saying, “Here four women danced: the gypsy, the spiritualist, the one who saw unicorns instead of men, and the water diviner. They evolved around two barefooted musicians, drawing back the silk curtains, wrapping themselves in them, and then revealing themselves. I was sitting in a cloud of incense when I began to rise higher and higher, until I was floating above everything. The water diviner ordered that the bed in the back be filled with rose petals, and so it was. The other women kept me up with the tips of their fingers, but I wasn’t afraid of falling. I wasn’t going to fall, not even when the sun rose and the daylight blinded the candles’ flames. I would float while there was music, I would come down; I came down slowly, following Vãikunta’s song, his voice pure and devoid of all melancholy. I touched, I touch the floor with all of my body when the music dissolved into the incense.” The women decide to worship the young drummer, and Vãikunta gives you a kiss that’s marked by the expansiveness of the intangible.

  The women and the other young man go out silently, leaving behind a few rose petals as a souvenir, and they float, unceremoniously falling every which way. Vãikunta rests his weight on you, and the woman who sees unicorns is amazed because those beings that the Greek Ctesias described for the first time have finally appeared. She leaves you both kissing on the floor of the house, and closes the door, trying to make as little noise as possible. She quickens her pace so as to catch up with her group. The gypsy walks ahead with the young drummer; the spiritualist and the water diviner walk arm in arm, exchanging secrets. Little by little, the street fills with people, until they arrive underneath a balcony where various people in Venetian costumes throw plastic bead necklaces and fake coins to the people. A man dressed as a Mandarin dominates the scene. His suit is the most brilliant of all, as is his manner of speaking. He encourages the young men who pass by on the street to drop their pants and show themselves to the public. Those who dare to do so receive in exchange the most beautiful necklaces and the biggest applause from the public. The women lift their arms and shout for a gift. I look at them from behind my mask, and they seem to look at me, too. They address me with open hands, hoping for a prize. So I throw them necklaces: green for the water diviner, gold for the spiritualist, lavender for the unicorn discoverer, purple for the gypsy. “You’re wasting your beads on women, Cancer,” Pardieu scolds me. “Yeah, yeah,” I respond while I toss a multicolored one to the young man who accompanies the women. “Much better,” comments the Mandarin man without neglecting the people. I think it’s more likely I’m wasting my life in general, but I keep quiet. I don’t confess my secret to you either, like I know that you couldn’t sufficiently capture Vãikunta’s voice, his body, the way he left a few delicious scratches on your chest and back, the suddenness that put an end to tomorrow and settled into yesterday. And that time in your memory you will constantly return to by way of the word.

  For me, secrets are accumulating in my throat until the people of the street leave with their necklaces, exhausted. Several zodiac signs have fallen down drunk on the balcony and in the little living room of the apartment where Pardieu continues saying goodbye without shedding a tear. He has asked me to accompany him to his house, where he’ll stop being a Mandarin in order to put on a simple pair of pants and a shirt and to arrive at the prison on time. “I think that the orange prison color looks good on me,” he told me a little while ago, and for the first time I notice that his voice quivers. “But I leave today and I return tomorrow, Cancer, I promise you that.”

  We leave the house and get into the limousine. By the Mandarin’s order, it turns onto Royal toward Pardieu Antiques. We get out of the car and look at the showcase in silence. Pardieu can’t resist the temptation to pick up the trash that the wind swept toward the door. “I leave tomorrow, I return yesterday,” he repeats without fail. He asks me to leave him alone for a minute. I wait for him next to the limousine door, trying not to watch. From here it seems like he’s praying. He continues a little longer. If he has been crying he hasn’t allowed me to witness it, because he’s hidden behind dark sunglasses. When he returns, he takes me by the arm and we get into the car. He anchors himself to me; he demands my strength. I am strong, I answer silently. He who leaves, dies, and my life is full of cadavers.

  “I leave tomorrow, I return yesterday,” he implores, trying to convince himself. “Are you going to be here, Cancer?”

  The secret rises up in my throat. It struggles to leave through my mouth, through my ears, through my hands. I fix my gaze on the surface of the dark glasses that Pardieu wears. My reflection is deformed.

  “No,” I answer as we leave the French Quarter toward Rampart by way of a street where many lovers are intertwined. “Don’t expect of me that which I don’t have, Pardieu. Don’t ask me to stay in yesterday.”

  New Orleans

  October 2000–March 2001

  (Translated from Spanish by Kristen Warfield)

  Six Days in St. Paul

  STEVEN CORDOVA

  When we awoke Saturd
ay morning it had snowed. Snow, in fact, was still falling, and as layer settled upon layer, it seemed another complication, or at least another possible complication, to my six days in St. Paul. Now, in addition to making decisions with Sil and Gerry, a process in which I was the third wheel, each diversion we had planned would have to be reconsidered, each undertaking taken with extra caution. Sil and Gerry would have to take turns driving Sil’s four-wheel drive while Gerry’s sporty new hatchback—purchased with only front-wheel drive—would have to sit out back, weighed down and snow blind, sleeping its way through my visit.

  Sil and Gerry’s front yard, despite the fact that it fronts their two-story Victorian home, is not a picturesque lot. It slopes dramatically, and descending the cement steps that bisect the yard, a visitor has to slow himself down—he has to resist gravity—or risk finding himself flat on his face smack in the middle of a two-way road. In the snow, however, that same front yard looked deceivingly peaceful, lovely even. Bruiser, one of Sil and Gerry’s two full-grown mastiffs, sauntered up, sniffed at one of my legs, then the other, periodically looking up at me with watery black eyes.

  “No need to pack warm provisions,” Sil had said to me on the phone the day before.

  “Really?” I’d responded.

  Sitting at my desk, I was stuffing another edition of the New York Times into my already brimming drawer.

  “I thought it was always cold in St. Paul at Christmastime.”

  “Usually it is,” Sil said, “but this year it’s unusually warm—like it is in New York.”

  And Sil was right. Or at least the online forecast confirmed his predictions. During my six days in St. Paul, the temperature was to remain mild, mid-thirties, mid-forties. No snow. No snowstorms. No freezing weather.

  “It’s a conspiracy,” I said to Bruiser as I squinted at the glare glancing off the snow. I turned and crossed the ground-floor bedroom, which had been converted into a gymnasium since my last visit. I made my way around the living room couch, around a large leather ottoman, and stood looking out the window. From there, I could see the back yard. Bruiser parked his rump on my foot, and Sil entered from the kitchen, handing me a cup of coffee.