Thine is the Kingdom Read online

  The dense darkness of the bedroom. She hears a laugh, must be Tatina. She also hears the wind of this October night. The window above the conjugal bed (the only window in the room) seems like it’s being pushed in from outside, like it’s going to open at any moment. Casta Diva sits up in bed. She can barely see her surroundings, yet she doesn’t need to: she could walk around the room with her eyes closed. She knows, for example, that the mirror is in front of her. Large, rectangular, in a blackened mahogany frame, with beveled glass, occupying the bare brick wall that faces the door. There’s the mirror, reproducing her with the clumsiness the lack of light lends it. She hates the mirror. Hates this and all mirrors. A mirror is a despicable thing, not so much because it inverts reality as because it multiplies it, as if reality weren’t disagreeable enough without having to be multiplied. She doesn’t see it. No matter: the mirror is there, in front of her. She sleeps on the left side of the bed, and what she has facing her is the large mirror. Many nights, when the moon is out and it is hot and the window may stay open, Casta Diva sleeps in front of the mirror, which is like sleeping in front of herself. She hates the mirror and she hates that image. (Within a few pages, this mirror will be the protagonist of a strange event.) She also hates the reproduction of Titian’s Last Supper, stained by the dampness from the wall. She hates her bedroom set, so cheap, of poor wood, bought on installment at Orbay and Cerrato’s, and she hates the easy chair, upholstered in gold damask turned black by years and years of sweat, and she hates Tatina s bed, which is a hospital cot with metallic rungs painted white. The only thing she loves in her room is the walnut secretary desk inlaid with marquetry That’s because the secretary is locked up with a key she guards jealously, and in it are her secrets, her soul, as she says, that which she truly is. She rises, puts on the house robe she had left draped over the little dressing table stool, and puts the satin slippers on her feet. She goes to Tatinas bed. The girl is a dark shadow among the white sheets. She laughs. Tatina laughs. Casta Diva hears the laughter, and also hates it, and she immediately reproaches herself, feels guilty. She lights the lamp on the nightstand (also metal, also hospital-like). She instinctively looks at her husband when the light turns the room into a real room. He sleeps, seemingly calm, nothing perturbs his blessed sleep. Then she looks at Tatina, who is looking at her and smiling. Her daughter’s face is large, deformed, and has little in common with the skinniness of the rest of her body Her chestnut hair spreads greasily over her pillow, sprouting from just above her eyebrows; Tatina scarcely has a forehead. Her eyes are small and restless, full of life. Tatina’s eyes sometimes terrify Casta Diva; they are eyes with an intense gaze that seems to penetrate to the truth of things. Casta Diva trembles when she sees her daughter’s eyes, which is the reason she rarely looks at them. Her nose is lovely, in that she took after her, the mother, a small and well-formed nose that in the end also bothers her, because that perfect little nose sits between two chubby jowls blackened by poorly treated acne, and above a gigantic mouth with powerful, widely spaced and dirty teeth and inflamed gums, a mouth disfigured by lack of words and excess of laughter. Her body barely exists. After the head, it’s her poor chest, then the rest of her body, poorer still. Without looking at her daughter, Casta Diva lifts the sheet, feels the diaper. You wet yourself again, little bastard, she says, trying to make the phrase sound sweet, without total success. She completely uncovers her now and takes off the diaper. The dry, sickly darkness of her daughter’s sex produces a repulsion in her that, rather than diminishing, increases with the years. She dries her off with a towel that always hangs from one of the bars of the nightstand, spreads cream between her thighs so the skin won’t get irritated, and puts on a clean diaper. Now go to sleep, child, your poor suffering mother’s not up to playing games. And she turns off the light. And goes to the bathroom. On the toilet (which she cleans and cleans and cleans, since her mother would always say that the cleanliness of a house begins with the toilet) there are a few yellow drops. Chacho is never careful, for all that I tell him, and tell him again, and shout at him a hundred times a day not to pee outside the toilet, fuck it, try and aim. She wipes up the drops with a bit of toilet paper. She lifts her house robe, lowers her panties, sits. She closes her eyes while she urinates, concentrating on the pleasure of urination, while again she sees a garden that isn’t a garden, among the painted backdrops that smell of dust, of rubbish, of old, damp cloth. Once more the lights are on her; once more, applause. The music. O rimembranza. Applause, applause. Pursued by the light, she walks to the center of that place that gives the impression of having no limits. A, perché, perché, la mia Constanza. Beyond, emptiness, dark zone, the abyss from which the ovation comes, crystal clear. She has opened her eyes, finished urinating, the last drops slip out slowly, and there is even, since she stands up without drying herself, a drop or two that roll down her thighs. Son io. She dries off, pulls up her panties. All of a sudden her gaze bumps into the medicine cabinet mirror. There you are again, damnation. Little as she wants to, she can’t help looking at herself. I was a beautiful woman, my skin was like bisque, my black and abundant hair fell in natural waves across my shoulders, and my eyes were nothing like my daughter’s, you could see my all in them, in my great, clear eyes, and my perfect nose (it still is perfect), and my short, precise lips that concealed or revealed (at my command) my teeth, which were pearls, cojones, they were pearls, no one should doubt it: I was a tall, elegant, beautiful woman, not a heavy-set woman (I am so glad), I kept (and still keep) my body at its ideal weight, and how gracefully I could (can) move, I was (am) made for success, Deh! non volerli pit-time del mio fatale errore, and now … what kind of night is this, when it looks like the world is coming to an end with this rainstorm and it’s nothing but a threat because the rainstorm doesn’t get it over with and end the lousy miserable world? Casta Diva smiles at herself in the mirror and then sticks out her tongue. Listen, old lady, you’ve got nothing upstairs but cobwebs now, you’re in worse shape than a whore during Lent. She leaves the bathroom, goes to the living room. Doesn’t know why she’s going to the living room. Coughs and tries to clear her throat. Drinks water from the faucet of the kitchen sink and then spits into the sink. Sediziose voá’ voci di guerra. She raises slightly the curtain of the window that looks out on the Island and sees that in the Island the trees look like they’re walking from all the wind, and she sees that the night is red, wine red, and she also sees lights in the Island, as if giant fireflies were wandering out there. Something terrible is going to happen, I just know it. And of course as soon as she gets this idea she thinks of Tingo and of course this frightens her, and she goes almost instinctively to Tingo’s room, and she opens it without knocking, because she never knocks when she is going to enter Tingo’s room (he’s just a boy). She turns on the light. Her son’s bed is rumpled but empty. Tingo, Tingo, boy, where have you gotten to? No one answers. Casta Diva returns to the bathroom, returns to the kitchen. Tingo isn’t home. And at this time and in this weather, where could he be? Tingo, boy, come to your room. She shakes her husband by the shoulders. Chacho, Tingo isn’t home and there’s a stupendous downpour on the way. Chacho pretends he doesn’t even hear. Casta Diva is furious, Fuck it, Chacho, you sleep and then you die. She turns, opens the door in the middle of the wardrobe and finds, in one of the drawers, her husband’s flashlight. And, just as she is, in her house robe and satin slippers, without even putting a comb to her hair, no longer so black or so abundant, protected only by the flashlight, Casta Diva goes out into the Island.

  From the Discus Thrower to the Diana, from the Diana to the David, nobody has come through here, otherwise it would be easy to discover them, real easy, because the impatiens and hibiscus wouldn’t be standing, the mimosas would be stomped on, and the ferns wouldn’t look the way they do, standing up straight, looks like the ferns aren’t touched by the typhoon that’s shaking the trees and the houses, that’s shaking us all, I just think of Chavito and I get scared, I don’t know why I’
m thinking of Chavito now, I bump into a head made of plaster, heads, shoulders, arms, hands, torsos, feet appear at times, gigantic and deformed, if he wants to construct a figure out of al that it would be a sculpted monster, poor Chavito, poor boy, you’re wasting your time, and I don’t know why I feel sorry for you when we’re all wasting our time, each in our own way, there’s nothing here and nobody’s come through, just me and my flashlight and, of course, this fear I have now of finding Chavito wounded, dead, I don’t know, it’s not even the first time it’s occurred to me, on various occasions I’m selling pastries in the entrance to Worker’s Maternity Hospital or in the building of the Anti-Blindness League, and it occurs to me that someone from the Island is going to appear to tell me that some misfortune has befallen my son, that he’s wounded or dead, I don’t know, now I’m really scared, a strange foreboding, the night’s ugly, that’s the truth, and I wish I could stop searching, just lock myself in my room, jump into bed, pull a sheet up over my head and forget about everything, start disappearing, like that, slowly, disappear so that when they come, when they force the bedroom door, they won’t find a trace of me in the room, at most my clothes and the sheet, not me, because I disappeared, and that’s all, I’d love to shout out that I’m scared, the light from this flashlight is yellowish, so everything I can see I see poorly and it seems unreal, could I be dreaming again? impossible, if I were dreaming things would seem real, that’s the way it is, always, and besides, over there by the fountain I can see Helena’s flashlight, and that proves that I’m awake, I’m not so crazy as to forget that she called me and said, There’s a wounded man in the Island and we have to find him, let’s go, Merengue, hurry up, grab your flashlight, that’s what Helena told me, and I know nobody’s been through here and fear is setting one of its traps for me: I say there’s nobody wounded, it’s Helena’s imagination, and as soon as I say it I know I’m lying out of fear, if there’s anything I’m sure of it’s that if she says there’s a wounded man in the Island, there’s a wounded man in the Island, that woman, it’s only right to recognize it, is infallible, now I have the David in front of me, and I dislike his tall, naked body (I come up to his knees), and that disproportionate hand holding a stone to kill I don’t know who, I shine my light on it, I’m surprised (I’m always surprised) to see it still white, despite the rain and the night dew, could it be because that big sapodilla tree growing next to it protects it? it doesn’t even have bird shit on it, the other statues are covered with shit, but this one isn’t, and it’s odd, besides, the Island is full of birds, once Chavito and I caught fourteen parakeets, fourteen, Chavito, I’m scared, no matter how much I talk and talk I’m scared and I don’t like the looks of this arrogant giant, I’m thinking: maybe over by Miss Berta’s classroom, over by the Martí memorial, I’ll go find something, the light is going toward the door that opens onto The Beyond, a shadow, that’s when I see a shadow, there, a figure approaching, stop, fuck, I shout at it, stop or I’ll stab you to pieces, that’s what I shout and it must be the fear: all I have is the flashlight, no knife to stab anyone to pieces.

  He is stretched out on the ground. Intense pain pierces his arm. The bird flies over him and retreats, hooting in a way that sounds almost like loud laughter. You finally got what you wanted, he whispers. And wants to stand up, get to the house. The pain in his arm is so intense he stays there, still as can be, eyes closed.

  It was the seventh night the bird had appeared. As if from out of nowhere. You’d think it was always there, hiding among the tree branches, waiting for him, allowing him a few minutes of ecstasy in the contemplation of Melissa’s naked body, just to flap its wings and hoot, show itself, the big old buzzard, all pure lustrous white, with enormous eyes that threatened him as much as its beak and claws did. The seventh night it had come, as if it were looking just for him, and it would circle and land, threaten him again, fly, hoot, land, snort, close and open its enormous eyes. Tonight it attacked him with greater ferocity. Vido didn’t try to defend himself, as he had the other nights, by rustling the branches of the evergreen oak, but instead he tore off a branch and brandished it furiously, get away, you shit of a bird, he said softly, he couldn’t shout, Melissa might hear him and then it would all be ruined. Now he thinks it was one of those moments when the bird was still that he looked at the rooftop terrace and understood: Melissa wasn’t there anymore, and he even remembers thinking then that anyone would have said that there was some complicity between Melissa and the bird, because as soon as its imposing figure appeared, spread-winged, she vanished into the darkness.

  It was the eighth night he had climbed the tree. The first time he hadn’t climbed up to look at Melissa, no, it was all because of the kite, by chance (by chance?). The kite was caught in the branches of the evergreen oak. Tingo-1-Don’t-Get-It s kite, which Chacho had brought home from the Columbia base and which flew so well and looked so beautiful up there with its red, green, yellow brilliance, dissolving in the distance into some other color. The multicolored tail they had made from the bits of cloth that Casta Diva gave them transformed it into a small trembling black dot. The kite flew high, it climbed so well that at times they lost sight of it. In those days the afternoons were blue, the breezes transparent. The kite climbed higher when he, Vido, lifted it. Sebastián and Tingo didn’t know how to. He showed them, from the superiority of his fifteen years. And he played out the string, and the kite stayed calm, as if set in a cloud. Later, when he passed the string to one of the others’ hands, the kite began to tremble and lose altitude, became vulnerable to the wind, and finally fell. That afternoon it was Tingo s clumsiness that made it get entangled in the oak branches, and there it was stuck in the crown of the tree. Tingo began to cry (typical of Tingo-I-Don’t-Get-It). Sebastián stood there looking open-mouthed at the dead kite. Vido spat, as he always did when he didn’t like something, and said bad words, the worst ones, which the other two heard reverently. Cojones, stop crying, he yelled at Tingo, don’t be such a fag, and he started climbing the tree, the tall evergreen oak and its difficult trunk, with an agility that made him happy because he knew that down there they would be following him, eyes wide with admiration. He himself felt his every muscle tensed, his back vigorously straight, his hands and feet like four claws holding tight to the oak and dominating it. He climbed, climbed, climbed. The tree branches put up no opposition, rather they seemed to open up docilely. When he was at the top he looked around, enthused by the height. Seen from above, the Island was nothing like the Island. All the vegetation hid the stone paths, the galleries, the statues, and only the fountain with the Boy and the Goose could be glimpsed, as a dark stain that would have signified nothing to anyone who didn’t know the Island.

  There, on the ample rooftop terrace covered with dirt from the winds, in the formidable afternoon silence, you saw her naked for the first time. It was at the hour when the afternoon began to turn itself into the marvel that is the Island at the approach of nightfall. There was no one there but Melissa. You knew that the others were beginning to flee, to hide in their rooms, and that later they would come out again, that later they would converse, laugh, talk about the events of the day as if life were eternal. Now, at that moment, they would be hidden, feigning indifference, pretending not to care, seemingly preoccupied with putting the last touches on dinner, or skimming a page of the newspaper (the one that gave the details of the death of Pius XII), or seeing who would pitch for the Almendares, or simply closing their eyes so they could open them again when night was already an accomplished fact. The hour of dusk, and you were among the evergreen oak branches watching the only person unafraid of dusk, Melissa, naked, Melissa, standing on the terrace with the parrot on her hand, and that expression of hers that you can’t tell if it’s satisfaction or mocking or both at once. Protected by the oak, you could watch her all you wanted. You forgot about the kite. Forgot about the pair waiting for you down there, who at times yelled impatiently at you. You only had eyes, only had senses, for Melissa, naked.
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  The next afternoon, at the same hour, he climbed the oak again. She, naked, in the same exact place as the night before, had the parrot on her hand and the same ambiguous expression as always. You could almost have sworn that she hadn’t moved from there, if it weren’t for the detail of her hair, no longer loose as before but gathered and adorned with a flower. She was motionless, perhaps looking at the fleeting figures of a group of clouds that obscured the last sunlight. At times she seemed to move her lips imperceptibly, and she lifted the parrot to them as if she were directing to it the words that Vido couldn’t tell if she had actually pronounced. Vido looked at her with a fixed gaze, trying not to miss any detail, so that his memory of it would be perfect in the comfort of the bathtub. And he realized the value Melissa had suddenly acquired.

  The terrace grew dark. Vido couldn’t tell whether Melissa had entered the house or whether she was lost behind the turn in the terrace, which, forming an angle, disappeared behind the casuarinas. The disappearance of Melissa had happened in a moment of distraction, in the one second he diverted his gaze because he felt a movement among the branches and a beating of wings, a strange snort. There was no one on the terrace, but the shadows were extending quickly, growing from the Island and propagating from there all over the world. Again the flapping of wings and the great white bird, as if from out of nowhere, the enormous eyes and the threatening beak and claws, flying bellicose above him.