by Rita Indiana
Iván de la Barra and Acilde gulped down their first drinks in silence. That eased the heat inside and let the vodka calm their senses. Acilde knew the old man liked to watch the official channel and he immediately went to the website to make him happy. “Stalinist remnants,” Iván said, excusing his taste, enjoying the chill as the AC touched the wet sweat stains on the armpits of his shirt. On the screen, Said Bona was paying homage to The Inactives, an artists’ collective that had transformed the Dominican cultural panorama in the 2000s. The president was emotional as he handed plaques to those who, buried in poverty and alcoholism, had survived the disdain of the very same institutions that now offered them paper glory.
Through Iván, Acilde had come to understand that an artist’s success is a combination of public relations, a bit of talent, and an extremely well-developed sense of opportunism, or rather, as Iván put it, “the spirit,” which had a voice with a slightly different timbre than his own and would tell him “go,” “don’t go,” “say this, say that,” “wear the Marc Jacobs jacket,” “Cartier is better than Rolex,” “lie,” “smile,” “play it crazy.”
It was precisely as Acilde watched the pathetic little group the president was celebrating that the bulb lit up. As Giorgio, he’d contact the younger Iván de la Barra to “discover” and “promote” the careers of various Dominican visual artists with whom they’d make a mint through their own art gallery. He’d find obscure local talents in their youth, like Argenis Luna who, now decrepit at sixty years of age, was shaking hands with the president on the computer screen. The project would kill several birds with one stone, especially now that he understood the mission for which he was destined was already aligned with his wife’s mission. With the money made by the art gallery they’d finally be able to make Linda’s dream come true: to build a laboratory at Playa Bo, equipped with all the latest technology, where they’d study and cultivate coral to replant it, whenever it was necessary, in its natural habitat.
Angelitos Negros
The wind from a fat storm cloud ruffled the trees. Toward the south, a fine black line coagulated on the horizon, which began to dissolve when the raindrops, falling like corn kernels from a sack, stirred a smell of steel, rot, and wood. A drenched Roque ran toward them, shouting: “There’s-a-crew-of-Spaniards-coming!” Before he reached the front of the hut where the new skins were treated, Engombe tied the ones that were ready and screamed and pushed the others to do the same. Argenis just had his engravings; he’d packed them in a leather envelope inside Roque’s chest to protect them from the salt wind. A few minutes later, carrying the hammocks, the skins, the guns and the tools, some vegetables, and what few belongings they each had, the four men left in Roque’s crew walked west, looking for the mangroves along the Sosúa river, which the Taíno knew like the back of his hand and where, according to him, they’d be safe until after the Spaniards had burned down their settlement and returned to Santiago, from where they’d most likely come. The Spanish crew consisted of twenty-five men, who Roque counted as he watched them through the telescope. They were coming down the mountain range and would take them at least another day to reach them. It was imperative to bury the chests and the skins to lighten their load. They stopped at the foot of a ceiba tree. The winds were dying down and they dug several holes forty feet from the tree. If any of them were to lose their life, the one-armed man reminded them as he dug dirt out of the earth, his chest would be divided among the survivors. They sealed the pact with a drink of water and got back on the move.
When they arrived at the mangrove swamp, it took them hours to light a fire because the rain, which they hadn’t seen in months, had made the air heavy and humid. The one-armed man devised a cover to protect the fire, using palm leaves braided with the tangle from the thicket. He stretched the two skins they hadn’t buried over the flimsy hideout, with the hope of being able to get some rest—a hope that was quickly dashed when a cloud of mosquitos and gnats invaded, as soon as they were still, and which swelled after Roque ordered them to put out the fire so the smoke wouldn’t give them away.
They ate pineapple. They took sips of moonshine. When night fell, an animal moving among the dead leaves kept them awake. At daybreak, with their nerves on edge, they made their way downriver. They were looking for the thickest jungle, least accessible to those on their trail. Argenis cut his big toe and wanted to pause to take a look at his wound. Engombe hit him in the ribs with the butt of the gun to keep him moving. Roque did nothing to stop him. Limping, with his eyes blurred by rheum and bug bites up his ass, Argenis was like a teenager, desperate for Roque’s approval; he offered to help him with his burden, talking to him about absurd things in the midst of the heat and the sandy mud that trapped them up to their knees with each step. They stopped before they‘d planned to and without any pretense of comfort, resting their heads against rocks or stumps, faint from insects whose attacks did not respect noses, eyes, or mouths. The one-armed man shivered with cold under the midday sun, his skin festering with pus-filled bites. Engombe covered his arms with wet sand to no avail, cursing the Taíno, whose skin, for whatever reason, was impervious to the pests.
Hostage to a slew of invisible evils in the Playa Bo of 2001, Argenis dragged himself like a penitent from the shower to his bed; he could feel all the stings his buccaneer self was experiencing. Free of any visible wounds, Argenis Luna, participant in the Sosúa Project, overflowed with venom and, to the strain of his throbbing, irritated flesh, he’d found a way to pay back Linda Goldman for the humiliation she’d caused him in front of everyone on the terrace a few days ago.
In a few minutes, the sun would rise and Linda, who never missed her morning walk with her dog, would find the animal hard as rock next to a bush on their property, victim of a nice chunk of Tres Pasitos sausage.
Just like in a cowboy movie, thought Argenis, and then he brushed his skin so he wouldn’t have to listen to Linda, who shouted Billy’s name once, twice, then many times until one last shapeless shriek let him know that finally she’d found the poor dog on the stairs to the terrace, his jaw stuck in some horrible rictus. Argenis went out, feigning interest, and joined the group surrounding the dog’s body at the feet of its masters, who wept inconsolably and held each other. Malagueta, what an ass-kisser, thought Argenis when he saw he too was weeping next to Elizabeth. Though no one knew her to express her feelings, it was obvious she was struggling to project concern and empathy as she squeezed Linda’s shoulder.
The day before, during the only walk he’d ever been known to take since arriving at Playa Bo, Argenis had been careful to buy the rat poison and sausage at a food store in another town. He felt like a genius for the first time in years. On the way he thought of Mirta, his ex, and the possibility of doing the same thing to her, but unfortunately Mirta didn’t like sausage. They buried the dear mascot in front of the terrace where he’d interrupted so many conversations, putting his paws on Linda’s lap with a tennis ball in his mouth so she would throw it for him, into the darkness, from where he would bring it swiftly back, satisfied and happy. Malagueta went to the trouble of finding a piece of white rock about two feet tall and they placed it like a tombstone over the grave. Iván really stretched his talent for analogy and talked about the death of Mozart, about the damned rainstorm that kept the masses from accompanying the musical genius to the cemetery, about his burial in a secondhand coffin trailed by a handful of folks.
The next day, Giorgio was on his way to supervise the remodeling at the art gallery in the city when he stopped by Argenis’ studio because Malagueta was there. He asked him to please sleep in the house and take care of Linda; he didn’t even glance at Argenis, who was now a good-for-nothing in his eyes. As far as Giorgio was concerned, Argenis had come to eat his food and lose his mind. As he listened to Giorgio give Malagueta Nenuco’s number and instructions about what kinds of tea Linda liked, Argenis caught sight of the canvases he hadn’t touched in days, the paint dried on the used brushes
which he’d neglected to clean because he’d been busy giving sips of water to a one-armed buccaneer who was shitting all over himself in the infernal swamp in his continuous and exhausting other life.
Malagueta was wearing new Kenneth Cole loafers and a pair of white cotton Bermuda shorts that emulated Giorgio’s style to perfection. It had been days since he’d worn his Dodgers cap, and he’d recently gotten back the six-pack buried under the old pot belly, thanks to a regimen of ab exercises. This guy’s cleaning up, thought Argenis, very aware of his own decrepit appearance since Linda had pointed it out at the table.
The 4/4 beat of an electronic bombo was making the studio vibrate. Elizabeth was rehearsing her DJ set for the party they were having that weekend to present the final products of their first two months of work. The guests—collectors, artists, foreign millionaires, surfers from Cabarete, the usual crowd that went to the few electronic parties on the island, and some bureaucrat from the Department of Culture in Puerto Plata—would enjoy an evening dedicated to Francisco de Goya. The flyer for the event, designed by Elizabeth, featured Malagueta in a wig, wearing an eighteenth-century Spanish suit and striking a pose with the palette, paint, and brushes of the Goya photographed by Vicente López. At the bottom of the flyer, in Garamond font, was the name of the event: Caprichos. The white of the wig and the gray of the suit contrasted with the blackness of Malagueta’s hands and furrowed brow, which made for both a comic and sinister expression. Malagueta gave Giorgio the finished flyers so he could pass them out in the city. He was very enthusiastic in front of Argenis who, thinking that one of his paintings should have been on the flyer, felt slighted once more.
The first lines of Toña la Negra’s version of “Angelitos negros” wafted in from Elizabeth’s speakers: “Pintor nacido en mi Tierra…” The bolero sample on top of the beginning of Basement Jaxx’s “Where’s Your Head At?”, and the long ooooos and the singer’s trumpeting introduced the epic spirit of the sound sleeve the DJ was knitting. The turntables, the mixer, the drum machine, and the samples were all on a table against the wall where Elizabeth had tacked and taped up papers, photos, notes on napkins, clippings from newspapers and magazines, songs, ideas, feelings, and pieces by Goya accompanied by her various interpretations of them, written on yellow Post-Its with her ugly script in red marker. The mural was a constellation of references, accumulated during two months of work with Iván, all-nighters on the internet, and the compulsive consumption of music she’d submitted to in the last few years. This collection was half of what she’d exhibit tonight, right there in her studio, along with the other half, which was what would make people dance after midnight. Her aural archaeology didn’t discriminate between genres. She’d learned from hip hop how to find nuggets of gold in a Rocío Jurado ballad as well as in a song by Bobby Timmons, pieces which, loose and looped, created a new music, divorced from the original sources. She stole, without leaving a trace, whole blocks of songs completely alien to one another, which she’d seamlessly weave with minor chords from the synthesizers, and filled the air with the dark nostalgia of the blues and with Dominican-Haitian gagá, which she loved.
While at Altos de Chavón, Elizabeth had visited friends who lived in La Ceja, a batey near La Romana, where every year during Holy Week, like in all the sugar towns on the island, they celebrated a fertility ritual. Under a canopy of branches, three long drums had kept the beat of an all-encompassing rhythm, unfurling hysteria in the polyphonic horns that sought out a marching movement in everybody’s legs and bellies. With the full moon at its zenith, she’d seen the sacred purple of the midnight sky over the sugar plantation and a firmament littered with stars. An old man possessed by Papá Candelo walked on coals toward her, patiently picking one up to light his pipe. When he stood by her side, she felt infused by his presence and discovered, specifically and eloquently, the extreme poverty suffered by Haitian workers, the tragic ties with which this ancient ceremony held on to the present, the permanency of a kind of slavery that now dressed itself up as paid labor, and the power of a music that lodged deities in human bodies, deities powerful enough to swallow the world.
It had all left a huge mark on her soul. Now, its edges took a more tangible form, in the music she remixed so painstakingly, looking for the danceable and mystical effects of that magic formula. She’d spent years aimlessly wandering from one career or project to another and now, finally, she’d hit the mark; her distinct talents could go the distance. The music for the party, a three-hour mix, would trace the flow line from Toña la Negra to the trance music of Goa, and would mine the threatening shadow path and delirious sweetness with minimal tech, deep house and drum ’n’ bass, Afro-Cuban prayers, voice samples from Héctor Lavoe, Martin Luther King Jr., Ed Wood, and Gertrude Stein. As a gift to Linda and Giorgio, who she was to some extent indebted to for helping her discover her true vocation, during the third hour’s climax and before leaping from a hammering beat to the cyber-hippie ocean of a repetitive trance, she’d throw in a little of Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” and Jacques Cousteau’s voice from the Haiti: Waters of Sorrow documentary. The effect would be tragic, inspiring, and contradictory: the French explorer’s predictions about the future of the island’s marine life would hang in silence for a few seconds until the bass came down again, like a tsunami, over the dance floor.
Argenis’ rock-trained ears took a long time to grasp what his colleague had spent several days putting together in her studio. The one-armed man is not getting better. Argenis seems to be the only one trying to take care of him, to wet his forehead with a rag, to listen to his ravings in a rough English he can’t understand, moving his stump around as though he still has his arm. Roque stays awake, guarding their refuge and going on patrols to make sure they’re safe. They eat moldy leftover cassava, not daring to light a fire or eat tilapia, which they could easily fish, because at the slightest move Engombe points the pistol at Argenis and the Taíno. The cut on his foot is infected and he tries to stay close to the sick man without moving too much so he won’t feel the pain. It causes cramps up his leg, which are not relieved by the aspirins he takes four at a time in the Menicucci complex.
Nobody brought him soups or coffee, or came to talk; his medical leave and the sympathies he might have provoked in others were over and done. Malagueta had done him the favor of opening the studio curtains and reminded him, in case he’d forgotten, that the party was tonight and they expected him to organize his studio and exhibit his pieces. He also offered, though not sincerely, to help him stretch his canvases out on the frames. Through the window he saw when Giorgio returned from the city and that two workers, one with a pick and the other with a shovel, were following him. The one-armed man has died overnight and now leaks all kinds of bodily fluids; they don’t know what to do with his corpse, all bruised and stinky. Flying above them in circles and drawn by the smell of death, the vultures will also attract the Spaniards’ attention. They decide to move on, to abandon the body to the scavengers to do with as they please. He’s curious why he feels sympathy now and not with that fucking Billy.
On a bench in front of the studios, Giorgio pulled a paper from a tube and showed the enthusiastic group the plans for the building that would be Linda’s lab, commissioned to the same architect who was doing the art gallery. Linda was surprised and smiled for the first time since the death of her dog. Construction was set to begin at noon, with a little ceremony that would require everyone’s presence; that way the evening’s party would still have its own reason for celebration. At the appointed hour, they gathered on the terrace. Linda looked like she’d been crying a lot and gazed at Giorgio with devotion as she talked on her cell to her colleague James Kelly, sharing the good news with him. The group, including Nenuco and Ananí, carried a cooler, a tablecloth, and brown bags with snacks. They surrounded Linda as they walked, made jokes about the future lab and, in their joy, left Argenis behind, who limped and leaned on a broomstick he’d found in the kitchen. The place chosen for the ceremon
y was a clearing on the other side of the street, acquired for a few cents, right in front of the Menicuccis’ property.
A few miles from the place where the vultures are circling, the buccaneers advance uneasily, hesitating over the mangrove roots while below in the muddy stream hundreds of crabs open and shut their pincers. Argenis made a superhuman effort to move his legs in both places, no longer asking himself why this was happening, and follows the others like a zombie.
“A great adventure starts now,” said Giorgio as he pulled a bottle of champagne from the cooler. Behind him, the two workers marked the place where the lab would be with four stakes and rope. Malagueta and Iván spread the tablecloth over the dry and yellow grass. Argenis was the first to sit down and the last to receive a glass. They toasted to the Playa Bo Marine Research Center. Iván poured some drops from his glass on the ground and asked for favor from the spirits buried there. Giorgio whistled with both fingers so the workers, who were fanning themselves with their caps, would begin to dig right there, where they would soon lay the foundations. The place was perfect, with access to the main road and in a small glade with perfect features, surrounded by the shade of almond trees, flame trees, and a ceiba, next to whose roots the picnic was taking place.
Argenis suddenly remembered where Roque had ordered them to bury the chest with his engravings. The Menicuccis’ workers drove their tools; they pulled out years of dirt and cow shit from among the ceiba’s enormous roots, which had grown like tentacles in the Antillean summers. The pain in Argenis’ foot and the rest of his problems abruptly vanished with a sudden burst of adrenaline. Giorgio was caressing his wife’s face with the back of his hand; unshaven for several days, an incoming beard darkened his chin. With his other hand, he tipped the bottle with the very same elegance with which the chief of the buccaneers had advanced through the swamp, leaving Argenis alone and at the mercy of the crabs, the heat, and the vultures. They were going to let him die and his engravings would be harvested by pick and shovel by Giorgio and his whore. Argentis turned back, leaping from root to root as though possessed, injuring his foot again on thorns and animals as he searched for the place where they had buried the chest, which he would unearth with his teeth if he needed to.
