O PYTHAGORAS!
My first job with Ramses, the photographer of the great beyond, was in steamy Miami Beach, at the Colony Hotel, where every Friday old classicists met who worshipped the ancient philosopher Pythagoras. They wanted Ramses to go there with his prodigious camera because they were going to invoke Pythagoras’s presence that day and it would be a good occasion to photograph him should he deign to appear. Ramses would handle the camera, I would take care of the lights, and Luisa, the medium, would try to communicate with Pythagoras from the fourth dimension.
When we arrived at the Colony, the classicists welcomed us with great displays of enthusiasm. They called Ramses “Maestro,” his prodigious camera “A Prodigy of the Ages” and they acclaimed the medium as gifted, touched by God’s hand.
We entered the lobby and the first thing that stood out were the many different animals there. There were doves, cranes, quails, a cricket, squirrels, white mice, and even an enormous peacock who smugly strutted around the place with its beautiful tail open like a fan.
Mr. Grigorakis, the hotel owner and a tried and true classicist, took us to the wide patio that overlooked the sea, where interested musicians had been playing lyres and singing sweet litanies invoking Pythagoras since seven that morning.
Luisa, the medium, who had been accompanying Ramses since he’d started his business, sat down in a chair in the middle of the circle of happy old men who were singing along to the sound of the lyres.
“Why are there so many animals?” I asked Grigorakis, pulling him aside.
“Because they understand Pythagoras,” was his response. And he then explained that, according to Pythagoras, after humans die they inhabit a variety of animals until they go through the entire universe of fauna. Then they again became human beings.
At that moment, Luisa, the medium, shuddered in her chair and fell into a trance, possessed by a spirit.
“I am Pythagoras of Croton,” she said in a guttural voice, “and I’ve been a lion, a chimpanzee, an elephant, an eagle, and a buffalo on the American plains. But today I appear in the body of a man, because my reincarnation cycle has reached its end. Is there love here?”
As their only response, the classicists took each other’s hands and started to kiss each other on the lips and the cheeks and to dance around the medium, to the sound of the lyres.
In the meantime, Ramses placed the camera in front of the medium and proceeded to take photos with the lightbulb and electrical-cable-laden device.
The classicists stopped dancing and crowded around the medium, who continued with closed eyes, imprisoned by a series of strong shudders.
Twelve photos were taken, until the medium stood up and said in a masculine voice:
“That’s enough for today. I have important missions to carry out in other parts of the world. But you can count on my eternal love, and call me whenever you need me. Ah! And don’t forget mathematics. Remember that mathematics is the primal science. And all other branches of knowledge stem from it.”
With that, Pythagoras abandoned the medium’s body and she fell to the floor face-down, where she lay for a long while, only recovering her senses little by little.
Grigorakis, the leader of the classicists, approached Ramses and asked him if he had managed to see Pythagoras through the lens.
“Just like I see you now,” Ramses responded.
“So, when will those photos be ready?” Grigorakis wanted to know.
“You’ll have them in your hands on Friday.”
“If Pythagoras isn’t in them, I’ll pay you anyway, but if Pythagoras appears in them, I’ll write you a check for six thousand dollars.”
“Don’t worry,” Ramses said, “Pythagoras has been photographed.”
They bid us farewell with a lot of applause and blessings and soon we were back on Flagler and 14th Avenue, where Ramses had his studio.
He started to develop the photos right away. I was also there, in the dark room, watching how Ramses developed the negatives under the faint red light. He developed all of them, and then he took a hold of the printing machine and started to print the photos. There appeared the happy old men, the lyre players, Grigorakis on his knees with his arms lifted high, as well as the medium with her eyes closed, surrounded by solemn old men holding each other’s hands. But Pythagoras was not there.
“Go find me a picture of Pythagoras in the archive,” Ramses ordered me, his voice urgent.
“That’s impossible,” I told him. “Pythagoras of Croton was never photographed in his lifetime or painted by any artist.”
“Well, then look through films set in antiquity for some old, bearded man who looks like a prophet.”
I went out to the archive and was looking for what Ramses requested for a long time. In the end, I came upon a photo of John Houston dressed as an ancient Greek, holding a staff in his hand.
I quickly took it to Ramses and asked him if that was what he wanted.
“I like it,” he said. “Find me more — seated, standing, talking.”
I went back to the archive and was actually able to gather several photos of John Houston in different positions in his prophet garb.
“Perfect,” Ramses said with the material in his hands. “Now leave me alone. For this work I need a lot of concentration and solitude.”
Ramses spent the whole day working in the dark room. It got to be five p.m., and the medium and I left the place, with him inside, concentrating on his work.
The next day, when I appeared before him in the dark room, he turned on the lights and showed me his work, still in the dryer.
There you could see the thirty old classicists in Miami Beach surrounding a Pythagoras dressed in a Grecian tunic, raising his staff very solemnly. There were four photos like that. The others were simple views of the hotel and of the jolly old men who radiated happiness as they danced.
“As you see, it’s all a trick,” Ramses said with a smile. “Pythagoras of Croton never existed, and if he did exist, he must now be old dust over the hot earth of Croton.”
“So you don’t believe?” I asked him.
“In anything.” Ramses responded. “When I left Cuba, I stopped believing in all religion and all philosophy. I embraced money as my ideology.”
“But then, this is a scam.” I said.
“Perhaps,” Ramses responded, looking down at his nails philosophically. “But they’re going to be happy with these photos. Their devotion to Pythagoras will lead them to blindly believe that John Houston is the real Pythagoras. They will never suspect that it’s a crude photomontage. They’ll be happy; I’ll have six-thousand dollars in my pocket. What you call a scam, I call a white lie, a dream machine. The camera I have is just a Japanese Nikon to take pictures of weddings and baptisms. Everything decorating it is pure useless junk to create an ambience. So, what do you make of all of this?”
By way of response, I started laughing.
“The perfect business.” I said.
“Good,” Ramses said. “Now you have to go to Kendall, to 122nd Avenue, to hand over twelve photos to an old woman who lost her daughter three months ago and is obsessed with the idea that the deceased is still living in her house. As you’ll notice, the daughter is none other than Bette Davis in the movie “Jezebel,” dressed as a late 19th-century lady. If the old lady complains that this isn’t her daughter, you’ll be able to tell her that spirits change their appearance according to their tastes and, to wander about in the fourth dimension they take on the face they like most. Got it?”
“Got it.”
“So go. There are twelve photos and the old lady should give you five hundred dollars, as per the contract. Do you understand?”
“Of course.”
“So get going!”
I left the studio in Ramses’ car and was soon in Kendall looking for the old woman’s home. It took me a while to find the house — it was tucked away, protected by two gates, and guarded by an aggressive Doberman who barked frantically at me from th
e moment I got out of my car. I rang the doorbell and the old woman answered, leaning on two crutches.
“I’ve come from Ramses Photos,” I said with a forced smile. “I brought the photos the Maestro took of you and your deceased daughter two months ago.”
“God bless you, son! I am willing to stop eating for a whole month for those photos. I’ll pay any price, but let me see them right away.”
I handed over the sealed envelope and she opened it very delicately.
There, in the first photo, you could see the old woman sitting in a gray armchair with Bette Davis behind her, her hands on the old woman’s shoulders, dressed in a very elegant suit from the mid-1800s.
“My daughter! My daughter!” the little old woman exclaimed, tears in her eyes. “Why does she look so different? She was thinner.”
“Well, spirits take on the form they always wished they’d had in their material lives,” I said, evoking Ramses’ words. “Believe me, this is the actual appearance your daughter has in the great beyond.”
“It doesn’t matter,” the old woman said. “It doesn’t matter to me at all. It’s my daughter and I’ll pay anything to have her with me again. Do you know how she died?”
“No.”
“It’s better if you don’t know. She was raped eleven times by three criminals, who afterward knifed her repeatedly, and then took everything she had in her purse. She was finishing up veterinary school — at the height of her youth.”
“She’s happy now with you,” I assured her.
“God bless you, son. I won’t eat, I won’t buy that plot of land in the cemetery I’m saving for. But it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t even matter to me to go without my heart medicine this month. My little daughter, my dear girl is with me.”
She turned around with the photos in her hands and came back a little while later with four one-hundred-dollar bills, all wet and wrinkled.
“Here you go,” she said. “That’s all I have. I know I’m one hundred dollars short, but I hope to God that kind-hearted Ramses can understand that there just isn’t anymore.”
“He’ll understand,” I said. “Don’t worry about that.”
I shook her bony hand and she gave me a kiss on the cheek.
“You don’t know how happy I am now,” was the last thing I heard her say when I was already in the car. I bid her farewell with a wave of my hand and went quickly back to the studio on Flagler Street.
“How did it go?” Ramses asked when he saw me.
“Fine. Here’s the money.”
“Only four hundred? I told her five hundred.”
“She doesn’t even have a bucket to kick when the time comes,” I explained.
“Nonsense! Those old folks have a lot of gold saved in the bank. You should have bargained. Tomorrow, I’ll go myself to get that hundred dollars. Now, go to the archive and look for a dachshund. It’s for another old lady who can’t be consoled after the death of her pet. I already photographed her, all I need is the dog lying at her feet.”
Calmly, without any emotion or desire to argue, I said to Ramses, “No, my friend. I’m done with this job right now.”
“What’s wrong with you, cubano? Aren’t you happy with the salary you’ve got? I’ll raise it to five hundred dollars a month soon.”
“I’m sorry, Ramses, it’s not that. Keep the money you owe me. Find someone else to deal with your archive. I’m leaving.”
“Oh, I get it. Scruples?”
“Something like that.”
“How long have you been in exile?”
“Three months,” I responded.
“You’ll never get a leg up.”
“I know.”
“Fine, leave if you want. Take this hundred dollars, you’ll
need it.”
“No, I don’t need it. Thank you.”
I turned my back to him and walked to the front door. From there, I heard Ramses raise his voice to say to me once more:
“You’ll never get a leg up here!”
I went out to the street. It was a beautiful summer afternoon and I started to walk toward downtown. I crossed the bridge, passed in front of the library, walked in front of the showy clothing and jewelry shops, and ended up at a lonesome park that bordered the sea.
There, I threw myself on the sand and leaned my head against a coconut tree. I didn’t have even one cent. I didn’t know where I was going to sleep in the days that followed, but I felt light, calm, almost happy.
O Pythagoras, Pythagoras! Keep me in mind when we see each other’s faces, there, in the afterlife.
THE PHANTOM BUNKER
Ferryman, oh, ferryman. Everything began because of that damned ferryman who was asking three thousand pesos to clandestinely take him out of the country.
“Three thousand, not one peso less,” the ferryman said, seated on the porch of his house, leaning against a wall decorated with revolutionary slogans, along with a picture of the tyrant Cornelio Rojas.
In his frustration, Danilo Castellanos had time to once again ponder the farce of a life that all of the country’s inhabitants lead. Nobody loved Cornelio Rojas, but in every house, like the ferryman’s, there were walls covered with revolutionary slogans and pictures of the dictator in a hundred different positions, in addition to a sign on every door that said, in brilliant letters, “This is your home, Cornelio.”
The ferryman, the man who had clandestinely taken more than five hundred people out on his shark fishing boat, gave the impression of being a loyal soldier to the dictatorship and the tyrant’s greatest admirer. “Three thousand, not one peso less,” the ferryman said again. And Danilo turned toward the street leading to the port, patting the paltry sixty pesos he had in his pocket. Three thousand; he needed three thousand. To wander the cafés of Paris, to get to know New York, to visit the Prado Museum in Madrid; to live like a free man for the first time in the thirty years he’d been alive. He walked toward the city. On every corner were enormous billboards with Cornelio Rojas’s face or those of the leading people in his government. Three thousand, three thousand. A legal ticket on an airplane would’ve cost a lot less, but Cornelio Rojas had forbidden all men under fifty years of age from leaving the country, due to military strategy and the agricultural need for strong arms and backs. Three thousand. Three thousand. Danilo sat down on a wall, in front of the sea, and began to sadly ponder ways to come up with three thousand pesos. His friends, teachers, and office workers lived day-to-day, like him, spending their paltry salaries on articles sold on the black market. His mother and father had died a long time ago. There was only his aunt Benigna, the aristocrat.
“Benigna is rich,” his mother had said to him before dying. “She must have over 20,000 pesos hidden away. But don’t ask her for one cent — don’t even try. She is the cheapest woman on earth.” And his mother added, “she doesn’t even keep the money in a bank. She hides it herself in the bathroom of her house, inside the wall, behind a blue tile below the sink.”
Aunt Benigna. She was the answer. He would go to her house in the neighborhood of Los Molinos, and he would cry, he would beg, he would kiss her feet so that she would lend him the money.
“None of that will do any good,” his mother had said. “My sister Benigna has a heart of steel. She could see you dying of hunger and still be incapable of feeling moved to give you one cent.”
Danilo Castellanos looked at the horizon over the sea for a long time. A ship with the French flag passed slowly before him with its prow headed toward freedom. He would steal. He would go see his aunt Benigna and would steal from her without hesitation the three-thousand pesos that the Ferryman required. Just three thousand; that way perhaps his aunt wouldn’t immediately notice it was missing. Yes, he would steal, and like the honest man he was, he would quickly return the money as soon as he was in the land of freedom. He stood up on the wall, contemplated the red ball of the sun that was sinking slowly into the sea, filled his lungs with salty air, and walked down the street toward the neighbo
rhood of Los Molinos, one of the city’s most exclusive.
As he walked quickly, he pondered the steps he should take. His aunt would be surprised by the visit, after so many years without any word from him. But he would justify his absence by saying he was working as a history teacher in a town out in the countryside. He would smile, hug her, take her that orchid that bloomed in the funeral home’s garden. Then the difficult part would come; listening to his aunt, listening to the idiotic things she would say, and going through the enormous family album with her, containing all the photos of the grandparents, cousins, and childhood friends who were now dead or in exile. Then the crucial moment would come; the excuse for going to the bathroom. Diarrhea. That’s what he would say. He would feign strong stomach cramps and would ask the old lady if he could use her bathroom. There, below the sink, was the fortune. Three thousand. Just three thousand. And perhaps that same night, he would be on the Ferryman’s vessel, covered by a sheet, headed toward international waters, where a Swedish cargo ship or an American cutter or a Canadian cruise ship would take him to the land of freedom.
When he passed in front of the funeral home, he plucked the showy orchid. Then he climbed up the steep street that marked the edges of the exclusive neighborhood of Los Molinos, where the majority of the highest-ranking government officials lived. It was almost night already when he arrived at the three-story building where his aunt Benigna lived. There, more than anywhere else, the streets were full of red flags and the houses displayed full-color pictures of Cornelio Rojas with the slogan that had been read and heard a thousand times: Education, Production, Defense.
Danilo Castellanos took a deep breath before going up the stairs that would take him to the third floor. He wasn’t a criminal; he had never stolen and, until then, he had been a dignified history teacher, respected for his moral inscrutability and his far-reaching knowledge of Ancient Greece. But he had to escape. He had become so disenchanted with Cornelio Rojas’s revolution that he had a duodenal ulcer and a nervous tic in his eye, which made him especially insecure in front of women. He had to act. Caesar did far more to gain power. Without hesitation, he skipped up the forty steps and as if he were in a movie, saw himself knocking at the door marked number thirty-three, where the shameful sign also hung, announcing, “This is your home, Cornelio.” He didn’t have to wait long. From the other side of the door, came the voice of an old woman asking, “Who is it?”
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