Thine is the Kingdom Page 4

  Nor had Lucio been thinking about going to Manilla’s house today. He had spent the whole afternoon thinking he would go to the outdoor cafes on Prado to hear the bands, and that’s what he had told Fortunato in the vinegar factory. It’s even possible that he had invited him, and if Fortunato could have set aside that strange attitude he’s had lately for a few hours, if he could have said yes, Lucio would certainly never have gone to Manilla’s house. But the guy just looked at him with that intense look in his dark eyes, didn’t smile, and said with a certain distaste, I’m not going anywhere. Lucio was so shocked at the aggressivity of the response that he lowered his head and didn’t know what to do, he could only dissimulate by washing out the bottles. And the guy, who noticed, called him, Lucio … And Lucio paid no attention, and said under his breath, Son of a bitch, and the other heard it, or guessed it, stepped away without a word, and stayed away for a long time without going back to. where Lucio stood, and if he did go back it was because Lucio, no longer angry, had called him. And Lucio thought now, if Fortunato had agreed to accompany him, he would have gone to hear the women’s bands at the outdoor cafes and he would have saved himself from Manilla and Miri. That didn’t happen. Fortunato yelled, I don’t feel like it, and Lucio left the vinegar factory at six in the afternoon and went home, where Irene had a bath ready for him with hot water and essence of vetiver, and he bathed for a long time, because bathing was one of his few pleasures in life, and he stayed there for hours running the soapy sponge over his body and thinking about the things in life, not as they were but as he would have liked them to be, since the truth is that he never thinks of things as they are. He shaved. He came out into the room without drying off, with the big white towel tied around his waist. Naturally he didn’t have to pick out the clothes he was going to wear; Irene, as if divining his intentions, already had his light-colored pants, his Prussian blue cashmere jacket, his white shirt laid out on the bed. Upset about the interference, however opportune as it was, upset because it gave the impression that his mother never made a mistake, he slammed the door shut and gave himself over to another of his great pleasures: lying down all wet on the towel spread over the bed, to let his body dry off by itself, while he thought about things, not as they actually were, of course, but as they ought to be. Then he dressed carefully, taking an interest in every detail of the clothes, with the agreeable sensation that his body would gratefully accept any piece of clothing, that everything fit it well, that he, as Rolo had once said without knowing he could hear, looked like a movie actor, and he went out into the living-dining room where the table was already set. He sat down in the hopes that Irene would not sit down facing him. As soon as Irene served him his water she sat down and said nothing for a long time, watched him eat with that sympathetic and admiring gaze that drove him to the edge of fury, and only when she began to clean up the plates did she say, Tonight the world is coming to an end with this rainstorm. Lucio replied with that brusqueness he always uses when he talks to his mother, For me, if the world’s coming to an end I hope it catches me in the street, and he went outside and saw the Island was a reddish whirl of wind and leaves, and he went as far as the fountain and stood there thinking for a long time, without understanding very well what he was thinking, because he wasn’t actually thinking but seeing images and repeating words, and he began to feel sad, feel a sorrow he knew all too well, one that made him long for a Fire Brigade, so! you spend your time wasting your time and while they’re at it they make me waste mine for the few miserable pesos they pay me, today more than ever I was looking out the window with nostalgia, I always like to look out at the rooftops of Marianao, blackened from the dampness, the obelisk, the white-and-red tank of the Aqueduct, the trees of the Island that I don’t know really are the trees of the Island but all I have to do is imagine that they are and I get a lump in my throat, whether they are or not, I look at the trees and manage to get myself out of the office for a few seconds, and today, when it was finally time for me to really go, I saw the open sky, and I don’t know why I said open because it was really more closed than usual, it looked like the world was coming to an end, at City Hall they were saying, Hurry, hurry, the rain’s almost here, I didn’t hurry, what’s more, it didn’t even occur to me to take the bus, haven’t I ever told you how much I love rainy days? Marta says I should have been born in London or Stockholm, does it rain a lot in Stockholm? where is Stockholm? there’s no such city, in spite of my sadness, in spite of my tiredness, when I walked down the steps at the entrance to City Hall I felt something that I can’t explain, pardon me, I’m so slow! something I’m incapable of explaining and it occurs to me, right now, to call it happiness, you understand? no, I know you don’t, you don’t understand, I don’t mean I didn’t feel tired or sad, but considering how tired or sad I was that afternoon with rain threatening, I felt happy, I often feel sad and happy at the same time, it’s as if one thing were connected to the other and I can’t explain it, the sky was about to fall to the ground, the strong wind, the smell of damp earth, a cloud was looming of dust, of dirt, of leaves, of papers, and all that increased my sadness, increased my new state of I don’t know how to explain it and it occurs to me now to call it happiness, and I actually didn’t know (I still don’t know) what it was all about, I don’t know if there really was a boy playing with a black rag, I was walking toward home, there wasn’t anybody in the street except for the little boy that now I don’t know if he existed, the houses were locked and bolted as if they were expecting a catastrophe, it had grown dark, it couldn’t have been later than five in the afternoon, lots of times I come walking back and I like to see the houses from the high part of Medrano Street, I like to see the ladies, that’s when they sit out on their porches and drink coffee or who-knows-what in elegant coffee cups, and they talk and they smile, when you live in a pretty house you have no reason not to smile, right? except today was different, first: there wasn’t a single lady on a single porch; second: I felt tired, sad, and happy, I had the impression that neither the streets nor the houses were the streets or the houses they usually are, I was wandering around lost and wasn’t coming back home but back who-knows-where, and the wind, as intense as it is right now, wouldn’t let me walk, in one street (I don’t know which one) I saw a wheel, no, no, it wasn’t a wheel, a rim, some metal thing rolling downhill along the street, it slipped along a little ramp as if someone were guiding it, it went into the Apollo Park, the Apollo Park is the little park before you get to the ditch, pretty near the train station, and I call it that as my own joke, it has a statue of somebody, some patriot who won some battle, I call him Apollo because the ugliest old soldier in the War of Independence couldn’t have looked half as ugly as that statue, not even if Chavito had made it, and the rim or the wheel, that metal thing rolling along like someone was guiding it, crashed into the base of the statue and made a musical sound, then I noticed someone was sleeping on a park bench, I approached, Irene, Berta, listen to this, a sailor, sleeping on the park bench, a sailor in full uniform and all, with his cap on his stomach and a duffel bag thrown on the ground, a sailor, listen, a young man, a boy, I’d say not more than twenty years old, thin, and he must be tall (he didn’t fit on the bench), a lovely face, all well defined and a little Oriental-looking, Oriental as in the Thousand and One Nights, I mean, and his hands on his cap, smooth hands, hands that had never hoisted a sail (though there aren’t sailing ships anymore, you can’t help thinking of Salgari and the days of the pirates), I didn’t see his eyes, like I said he was sleeping, but I did see his lips half open and, I swear, I had the impression that I had never seen such beautiful lips, and that made my tiredness or sadness more intense, my happiness vanished, I thought, There never was any happiness, that was just something I made up to keep from feeling so bad, I got back to the Island feeling like I was going into the cemetery to be buried alive, my sister Marta greeted me as she always does; that is, she didn’t greet me, didn’t respond to my kiss, didn’t say a word, I asked her how
she felt and she answered glad to be blind so she doesn’t have to see me, me and the rest of the world, because she thinks the rest of the world must be as stupid as I am, do you know what it is to spend your whole day under the nose of that old Morúa, writing and writing endless pages of municipal nonsense, just to come home and your sister, your own sister, your twin sister who shared your mother’s belly with you, who shared the Cemetery and Typee with you, treats you like that? do you think that’s right? I took a hot bath, a hot bath can’t get rid of my tiredness, my sadness, but it does allow me to sleep as best I can, I didn’t eat dinner, I drank the dreadful tamarind juice I had made myself yesterday, I lay down in bed, I must have fallen asleep right away, and I don’t know what I dreamed or what I didn’t, the wind was howling, like in the novels of Concha Espina or Fernán Caballero, which I’ve never read, probably I was dreaming I was Ida Lupino playing Emily Bronté, I would have loved to be a character in Wuthering Heights, to live in the pages of Wuthering Heights, at some point I heard a knock at the window, I woke up, in one of the frosted panes I saw, perfectly outlined, the face of a man, I let out a scream, the figure disappeared, I ran and even though I’m such a coward I opened the window, I just managed to see a white figure disappearing into The Beyond, I leaned against the window to be able to bend over and see better, and when I stood up again I discovered that the window and my nightgown were stained with blood. Berta rises, goes to the window. It seems to be raining, she exclaims without conviction. There’s no one out there but the strong wind that’s trying to rip the trees out by their roots. I still haven’t told the worst part, Irene says, opening her eyes. There is such hopelessness in Irene’s gaze that the two women reach out their hands, as if by agreement, to hold Irene’s hands and caress them. Mercedes begs, Don’t get like this. Irene shakes her head and adds, How should I get if I saw my own son. What do you mean? A long silence. The two women keep caressing Irene’s hands. Once more, in a quiet voice, almost a whisper, she explains that she couldn’t remember who had given her the pitcher that the wind broke this October afternoon. She shows them the finger she cut on the broken porcelain, she wonders where that pitcher, which now resides in the trash can, could have come from. The most terrible part, what she hasn’t told yet, took place when she wanted to remember Emilio, her husband of fifteen years, the only man in her life, but all she saw was Lucio, that really is serious, very serious, I must be going crazy. Explain it to us, woman, don’t get hysterical. Irene talks as if it were someone else talking, there is a distance between what she says and her anguished face, the words slip from her lips with a strange coldness. She had lain in bed for a long while searching through her memories for the face of the man who had been so important for the fifteen best years of her life, and as much as she tried, all she kept seeing was Lucio in his blue jacket. She decided then to do what she had refused to do up until that moment, not out of an idle whim, no, but because she wanted to find Emilio ‘s face on her own, without any help. But a point came when she couldn’t take it anymore and she had to compromise, she went to the wardrobe and took out the box of photographs. I opened it as if my life depended on that banal act. First she found photos of Lucio as a baby, chubby, my son always looked older than he was because he was such a well-bred little boy; I found photos of me with him, of me alone, there in the Island, back before Chavito went into making statues; photos at the beach (what beach?) and a lovely tinted photo where you see me in a brown overcoat walking down Galiano Street, or San Rafael, or Belascoain, how should I know, I look good in the photos, I wasn’t always the disaster I am now. And at last I found a photo of Emilio. At last I could see my husband’s face. In a field, shirtless, holding a stick for knocking down mangos. Lovely-looking, with that ingenuous smile he always had, wide eyebrows raised high over his big melancholy eyes; black, straight hair, stubbornly falling across his forehead. Athletic like Lucio, Lucio took after him, not a hair on his chest, better formed than any of Chavito s statues. I was in ecstasy looking at the photo of my husband and that was the only way I could remember him, see him in front of me, almost talking to me, I saw him (may God forgive me, there are things you don’t say about the dead) the way he used to look when he wanted to touch me, I mean, caress me, kiss me, and he wouldn’t do it brusquely, Emilio could be anything but brusque, he made his advances softly, the quieter and sweeter he seemed the more I knew he wanted me, I knew him better than anyone, by the way he would bring me a cup of coffee, or the way he wouldn’t look at me, would avoid my gaze, when he was full of desire he seemed embarrassed to be looked in the eyes, and let me tell you, pardon me for speaking like this about someone who is dead, I know very well there are things you don’t say about the dead, but timid as that man was, he could love with a passion that held not only his but mine as well, my passion was mixed into his even though my body wasn’t, keen as I was to make me his, to surrender myself, to let myself be possessed, I’d get into bed, close my eyes, that’s all I’d have to do, wait patiently, eyes closed, I would sense his footsteps around the bed, and the truth is I don’t know how I could hear it, he would move around me so delicately that my heart seemed to beat louder than his footsteps, he would caress my head and I would stop being me, 1 would turn into anything, a defenseless animal, frightened, I never lost that fright, and I think that’s what love is, a kind of fright, and when you lose that fright it means love is over, and the fear is logical, it’s that when you’re in love you’re facing someone who is stronger than you are, someone you allow to be stronger, someone you give your courage to as a gift, someone who could do whatever he wanted to with you, turn you to dust if he wished, I liked the fright I felt when my body stopped being my own, and this afternoon I could recall it, I saw him just as he was in the photograph, smiling, his torso naked, and it was just as if the photo had come to life and he had dropped the mango stick to come closer, to tell me, without looking me straight in the eyes, that he loved me, pardon me, don’t blame me if I tell you what I’m going to tell you, I got into bed, closed my eyes, I surrendered myself there in the bedroom where all you could hear was a rainfall that I knew wasn’t rain but just wind on this strange, strange day, I surrendered myself, I mean, I waited for him, the fright gripped my stomach, I was going to be his again, not just going to be his but needed to be his, I had been waiting for so many years for the moment when he would lie down on me again, without talking, without letting me talk, without letting me say what couldn’t fit into my fright at all, he always left me with the desire to tell him everything I felt, and now I shouldn’t talk, out of respect, my husband was dead and I should respect him, and how brave I had to be to keep quiet, not to let any words betray me, and I spoke, I said everything I had ever wanted to tell him in all the years of silence, I said whatever I wanted to, and my hands gripped his back tight, I didn’t open my eyes, I knew I wouldn’t find anyone, and I didn’t need to open them, I could see better at that instant with my eyes closed, I can’t tell you the rest, I don’t know what you are going to think of me, if you think I’m shameless, I still haven’t told the worst part yet.

  Berta stands up, goes back to the window. There’s nobody there, she announces, and anyone could see she’s saying it to hide her embarrassment. Mercedes is drinking from her long empty glass, she throws her head back, tilts up the glass so that the one drop of linden tea still in it will reach her lips. Though she is not crying, Irene dries her eyes, and you’d have to know her to understand this is a gesture she often repeats, drying her dry eyes. The worst part is that I stayed in bed with a happiness that I thought I had lost forever, I got up after a long time, with a strong smell of saliva on my neck, on my face, I looked at myself in the mirror, I had the marks of his lips on my neck, I thought my words (which I had spoken so desperately, as if I were expecting him to quiet me with his hand at any moment) were still echoing around the bedroom, they really weren’t my words, of course, just the odious echo of that wind that’s going to make idiots of us all. And when she went
back to sit on the bed, she again picked up the photo of the shirtless man, the gorgeous man who was smiling and carrying a stick for knocking down mangos. She turned over the photo. There was the dedication: FOR MY MOTHER, A MEMENTO OF HER SON. Irene stands up, looks like she’s about to run away. Don’t you understand? It wasn’t Emilio. It was Lucio.

  The evening lights went out too soon. Still early, Marta closed her eyes. It didn’t matter if she kept them open or closed: her eyes lived by the light of day. When night came it came once and for all, until the new sun rose, if there was going to be a new sun. She felt weary. The effort it took her body to make up for her eyes wore her out tremendously, and at the moment when the last light of the evening (and today the last light of the evening was a baneful little light at midday) shrouded the house, the garden, the Island, so absolutely, possession of her house (the first on the right, between the courtyard and Casta Diva’s), Helena went out to reconnoiter the Island, both This Side and The Beyond, though at that time they weren’t known by those names. Back then there were as many trees as there are now, and the cobblestone paths had been opened up, and the fountain hadn’t dried up yet. The statues, however, weren’t there (Chavito was just a little boy and still hadn’t gone into making sculptures). For a long time people all over the area had been talking about the mysteries of the Island. It was said that many people had gotten lost in it, never to reappear. Irene tells that when she saw Helena ready for her first reconnaissance she felt obliged to call her and put her on guard, to let her know how many dangers lay in wait, sotto voce, of course. Godfather was alive, and that ill-tempered Spaniard couldn’t stand to hear absurd attacks on the reputation of his property without boiling over in anger. In a very low voice, but very clearly, she told the story of Angelina, of Cirilo, the young flute player in the Military Band at the Columbia base who lived where Mercedes and Marta are today, and who composed the most despondent music in the world and played it with tears in his eyes and you never knew why. The poor flute player, dirty and sad, went deep into the Island one morning playing one of his most anguished melodies and he was never seen again. Irene explained to Helena that some afternoons, especially on rainy days, you can hear, though no one has ever been able to determine where it comes from, the heartrending music of Cirilo s flute. Irene also told her of a similar fate met by little Eduviges, a six-year-old girl with strange visions. The oddest little girl, if you only knew, she didn’t seem meant for this world of ours, that is, for this Island where God and the devil have equal sway, the girl announced one morning that she was leaving because she wasn’t ready to bear what would necessarily ensue, one way or another (what could she have been talking about?), the neighbors thought it was all a game, and little six-year-old Eduviges with the strange visions kissed her doll and got lost, over there, somewhere around the fountain that hadn’t dried up yet in those years, and what do you think about Laria, that dark, ugly woman who was deemed a saint and who went from house to house touching the foreheads of everyone she could reach, to cleanse them of their sins, she said? well, that Laria was burned one night (what a night, heavens me, I remember it like it was yesterday!) at the stake and nobody knows who set it on fire, she cried out that the devil had tied her there, we couldn’t do a thing, the bonfire was immense and for all the buckets of water and all our running back and forth, poor Laria was reduced to a little pile of dust that the wind swept away, just imagine, here the wind doesn’t even respect the ashes of a saint like Laria, and we’ve written the Pope in vain, seeing about canonizing her, Saint Laria, virgin and martyr, because, she was both, no discussion, with all the blessings she gave, poor thing, and the fact is that Laria still wanders around out there touching our foreheads, since there are days when you can hear her footsteps and feel an invisible hand (look, I’m getting goosebumps) on our foreheads, I swear, and I can tell you the story of Rascol Nico, the butcher who killed an old lady with an ax and purged his sins here, and I can tell you about Pinitos, he was seven years old and said the most outrageous things, for example, that he had seen a stranger who was crying because he had no shadow, it’s true, he had seen it himself, in a clearing left in the trees, the man would stand in full sunlight and it was like there was no point in him standing there, nothing, not a shadow testified he was ever there, the man cried and he showed you a bag from which a sound of metal coins escaped, he also said that he had seen a young couple named Pablo and Francisca, beautiful and once in love, who were swept around by a gale of a wind that wouldn’t leave them in peace and banged them into the trees of the Island, which as you know are large and many, the wind was full of howls, Pinitos would say this with eyes that looked like two stones and then he’d stand there with his mouth open, as if he couldn’t believe such a story himself, and Francisca recounted amid sobs and tears that while they were reading together an irresistible force had emerged from their book that compelled them to kiss each other and to caress each other and to surrender themselves to each other, to sin, as she put it, swept around by the wind that wouldn’t leave her in peace and that banged her against the tree trunks, the gale turns out to be their punishment for letting themselves be carried away by the force of a book so strong it had compelled them to kiss each other, one afternoon Pinitos carne out of the Island more perplexed than usual, he told the story that a man named Abram had brought his son to The Beyond, near the river, and that the man named Abram had compelled his son to kneel down while he talked with his eyes turned upward; the youngster, hardly more than a little boy, laughed and said, My father, Abram, don’t be afraid, for God is merciful, and then and there the man, who was enormous and had a dreadful face, had cut off his son’s head, and the boy’s head rolled to Pinitos’s feet and he saw how the eyes of the bodiless head were still blinking and the lips were smiling and it still had something that seemed like a voice, though it didn’t sound like other voices, a voice with no resonance, a voice that no one would call a voice, and it repeated two or three times God is merciful, until the mouth fell still with the smile frozen on it and the eyes no longer blinked, then the huge father, the man named Abram, cut off his own head saying God is a royal son of a bitch, and his head flew off like a baseball and landed who-knows-where, Pinitos had lots of stories that entertained you, though it’s good to recognize that they scared us, one afternoon the mother of Pinitos came to talk with Godfather, the mother of Pinitos was the best lacemaker in Marianao, a woman so small that you’d talk with her without seeing her, it was like talking to a pair of shoes, she was so worried that she came to beg Godfather not to let Pinitos wander around the Island anymore, the boy had gotten home very late the night before saying that he had met two men who were not two men but a single man in two different ways, a certain Doctor Ecks and Mister Jay, that he had seen how a warmly dressed woman, in a hat and muff, had thrown herself in front of a train (something that is absolutely impossible in the Island, let it be said in passing, because, where are the tracks that a train can glide along here?), that he had seen a gondola go by full of women in heavy makeup, dressed up like for a carnival, who surrounded, kissed, and fondled a man with a white face and wig, and many other things that she couldn’t remember and that had her deeply worried about the future of her good son, who aside from his bad habit of making up stories was proving to be an excellent child who could already multiply and read fluently, without mistakes, Dulce María Borrero’s easy poems in his fourth-grade reader, and Godfather made a promise, and the pair of shoes that were the best lacemaker in Marianao, the mother of Pinitos, went away with her fears allayed, having fulfilled her motherly duties, except Pinitos kept on visiting the Island behind her back, we found this out later when it was already too late, I met him one morning with a bag, or rather a pillow slip, in which he was carrying, he showed me, several shirts, a canteen filled with water, a piece of chocolate, some olives wrapped in paper, six Maria cookies, a little hand mirror, and a book of the History of Cuba, he explained that he was going on a crusade to the Holy Land, I riposted
that crusades were for men like Peter the Hermit and Richard the Lion-Hearted, but he smiled before clarifying for me that he was going precisely on a children’s crusade, that there were already almost thirty thousand children ready to retake the lands usurped by the infidels for Christianity, that they would reach the sea and it would part to let them through by a miracle of God, because God protects those who love Him, he begged me to keep quiet because if his mother found out about his decision she would tie him to the foot of his bed, I can say without fear of being mistaken that I was the last person to see Pinitos, I saw him enter next to the Laocoön heading toward the Discus Thrower, it was an afternoon when a strange breeze was blowing through this land of dust and motionless trees, the Island swallowed him up, as his mother screamed afterward, so small it looked like a pair of shoes were screaming, and I can say the Island swallowed him because the plants closed up around him with a certain relish, a certain gluttony, I don’t know how long ago that happened, not even his mother is still alive to clear up the date for us, Pinitos was crazy of course, all the stories he told were nothing but a pack of lies, and if it was all a lie, why did we never see him again?