Thine is the Kingdom Read online

  Hear me, oh Lord, I’m lighting this candle before Your tortured image because I can hardly remember my own name, earlier, when it was raining, I lay down to remember things and of course I got sad and cried, and I shouted Stop raining, stop raining, I said I didn’t want the memories, they disturb me, they just come to bother me, they’re like a plate of cold unsalted farina, though I actually loved remembering things while it rained, lying in bed, before, when it rained, to keep from crying, I’d have to put a really loud and spicy Celia Cruz song on the record player, Songo gave it to Borondongo, Borondongo gave it to Bernabé, to keep the memories from harassing me, and I’d leave the bed and leave off crying and go to the kitchen to make up odd dishes, or I’d sew on the Singer that sounds like an oxcart, and talk with my son, shout, to keep the sound of falling water from getting into my head, and cook batches of sauce, wash the floor with perfume to cover up the smell of grass and damp earth, ah! today, oh Lord, look at me lighting this candle before Your tortured image to beg You to let a little ray of sunshine into my memories.

  The rain today is for real, now it’s really raining, full force, making good on the threat. And Merengue, who hasn’t been able to go out with his cart and pastries, sits on the rocking chair with the broken wickerwork and smokes his cigar (there’s nothing like smoking an H-Upmann on a rainy day like today). He would have liked to stay in bed, to sleep away the rainstorm, there’s nothing like sleeping when it’s raining, but he’s not all that drowsy, and not used to spending so the sea, when I was a little girl, when my eyes were still living, after the cemetery I lived by the sea, I’ll never forget it, Mercedes was impressed by the water and the color of the waves and the foam and going in where gravity couldn’t stop her, she said, I was never as impressed, for me the sea was always a sound more than anything else: an immense, deafening crash, could it be that I was already getting ready, without knowing it, for the blindness that came later? I enjoyed that deafening crash, it was nothing like any other sound I ever knew, an echo, a resonance that somehow held me, that I somehow participated in, nothing like that had ever happened to me (nor has it happened again), and when it rains, like today, I distantly recall that impression, and that must be why it makes me think of the sea, because on the high seas the sound of rain must be louder, I can’t remember very well, it’s been so many years since Uncle Leandro’s house, no, it hasn’t really been so many years, it’s just that when you can’t see … and today just as soon as I thought high seas I immediately imagined a ship, I think I can remember what ships are like, and I said Morocco, Sardinia, Cyprus, what difference does it make, rocky coastlines bathed by a sea the color of earth (so I imagine it), I’m in the prow, yes, just about to dream, the nausea is gone, it always goes away, I’m back in the usual darkness, this constant, dark, nearly black redness that I’m condemned to, there’s one terrible punishment and it’s being born on an island, there’s a worse punishment, being blind on an island, and to top it all off, this lack of dreams! and if you have all these circumstances together there’s no cure for it, you don’t care whether it rains or clears up or whether it snows or whether railroad ties fall head on, whether it’s spring or winter, you get sick of the senses of smell and feel and taste, you’ve gone blind on an island! as far as I’m concerned the sky can split itself open with rain, blind on an island, condemned to a rocking chair, which means that for me the rocking chair is the planet, it doesn’t revolve around anything, though luckily it does move.

  She has gone out naked onto the terrace. It’s raining furiously. Melissa must feel like some force is compelling her to stretch out on the floor. And she does stretch out. From the expression on her face you could tell that she’s experiencing a new sensuality. Wouldn’t it be like thousands of hands caressing her? And when the sky opens up with lightning bolts, you’d say she was laughing and shouting with joy

  Don’t play dumb, Vido, Melissa is out on the terrace and you know it. She doesn’t care if it’s pouring rain. She goes out like it’s nothing: the rain obeys her. You know Melissa’s out in the downpour, laughing, having so much fun, pleased that everyone else is hiding, hating, loving, dreaming, pretending not to dream, while she feels her body being caressed by thousands of hands. You, on the other hand, are all closed up in here. You can’t go outside. The world is coming to an end with this rainstorm (whenever it rains they say the world is coming to an end) and they won’t let you go outside, Aunt Berta insists you could catch pneumonia, don’t go looking for headaches. I know (how could I help knowing) that you’re thinking one case of pneumonia more or less won’t make a bit of difference so long as you get to see her naked, her, Melissa, the only woman you’ve seen or desire to see naked. Melissa, with a body that cries out to be caressed. What do you care about the rain, Vido, what do you care! Listen to me, just take off your clothes and you go out too in the downpour. As bare as God brought you into this world. Just jump out the window like usual, nobody’ll see you. There won’t be any mud down there. There’ll be lots of grass growing there, and linden and rosemary bushes and lots of other things to intervene between your feet and the earth. And the downpour will feel so good against your naked body! Don’t you get how new it’ll feel to sense the downpour on your skin? Your body will react in the best way; that is, as if you were already standing before her, with your mouth open, your eyes closed, and your prick standing straight out. Like that, naked, you’ll walk past the Hermes of Praxiteles (which isn’t a Praxiteles but a Chavito) and past the horrific bust of Greta Garbo. You’ll also walk past the Venus de Milo (don’t even look at it, it’s made of clay). You’ll round the building and get to the evergreen oak. Then you’ll get a great surprise, because when you’re about to climb it, you’ll feel a hand reach out and stop you. The hand that lightly squeezes your shoulder, Vido, will be hers, it has to be hers, because nobody else (listen up: nobody else) could touch you like that. In your very best voice you’ll say Melissa! She’ll laugh even more. You’ll turn around. It will really be her standing there, naked, the two of you naked in the pouring rain, saying nothing, just laughing. She will touch your chest and say something you won’t understand, not even by reading her lips. Besides, what difference does it make. She’ll come close, caress your back. Her breath will be delicious as the smell of rain. You’ll lean over a little to kiss her on the lips. The little devil will move away, run off through all the trees, disappear, you’ll search desperately for her, Melissa, fuck, don’t leave me like this. And you’ll find her leaning against the red sandalwood tree of Ceylon, laughing, waiting for you with her legs spread open. You’ll stop in front of her without getting too close, to punish her, so the little whore will learn, you’ll show her that big hard thing you have bursting triumphantly from your crotch, and you’ll shout, scream, If you want it it’s all yours. She’ll reply, Yes, I want it, and she’ll hold out her arms so you’ll go to her at last. The downpour over the Island growing stronger as if it knew it would cover you both that way, and save you both. With marveling hands she’ll place your prick in just the right spot. You’ll enter, not knowing where but knowing you’re entering happiness. You’ll be as happy up in the oak as you’ll be on the terrace as you’ll be in your room, and when you open your eyes you’ll see yourself embracing the bird that will flutter and fly away, and when you open your eyes you’ll find yourself in your room, and there’ll be nobody there, forgive me, Vido, when you open your eyes you’ll realize it’s all been a mean trick the author has played on your character, and you shouldn’t blame me, because after all imagination is more magnificent than reality. And there, Vido, on the dressing table mirror, a white, thick, slow liquid, your cum.

  The stage should be large, full of real trees, leaves, branches. Let’s say it represents a forest of ancient Greece. A vestal maid appears. White tunic waving in the wind. The wind escapes from large fans between the curtains on the stage. The vestal approaches slowly. She had been nervous; no more. From the moment her bare foot feels the boards of the stage,
her fear dissipates as if the prop wind had carried it off. Applause. The rain is made of applause. Since the rain doesn’t stop, the applause doesn’t stop. In any case, there is a great silence for her, a tremendous silence. She sees no one. The public doesn’t exist. All that exists is the stage, the music, and she, dressed as a vestal in the midst of a forest of ancient Greece. She begins to sing a lovely aria by Gasparo Luigi Pacifico Spontini. She alone knows what she experiences when she is singing. A sensation like none other she can remember. Her voice is marvelous, she knows, she hears, she can do with it whatever she wishes. She cares about the public, that’s true, and that is why its emotions reach her, the reverential, religious way it receives her song. She holds out her hands. The aria is really saying: My public, this voice is for you, I’m nothing without you, my voice and I were created to make you happy The music stops. The purity of her voice is crowned with an ovation. Applause. The rain is made of applause. This one, today, so intense, can be called an ovation. Shouts of brava!

  And if I were to remind you, Casta Diva, that rain is rain and nothing more, would that be cruelty on my part? And if I were to remind you that your fine husband has been lying in bed for days without addressing a word to you (to you or to anyone else)? If I were to remind you that Tatina has wet herself again, that Tingo is playing with a paper puppet, that there is no forest, real or fake, and you aren’t dressed as a vestal? Look, look around you, one poor room. Listen, there’s no applause, no ovations, no shouts of brava. Just an Island that’s flooding, a husband who doesn’t talk, a son who doesn’t get it and just plays and plays, and an idiot daughter who wets herself every five minutes. Oh, and a mirror! Why don’t you dedicate a glass of water to the spirit of Spontini? You’re hoarse from shouting that the rain is making you hoarse, that you can’t sing the way you and your public deserve. That’s fine, Casta Diva, I don’t want to be too wicked, I don’t want to take too much pleasure in watching you suffer. Close your eyes, pay close attention, the stage should be large, full of real trees, leaves, branches. A forest in ancient Greece, and you come out dressed as a vestal. The rest of it, please, you can imagine for yourself.

  Now’s the time, Tingo. Take advantage while your mother’s sitting on the easy chair hiding her face in her hands to imagine she’s on stage, and leave the cardboard puppet, go out into the gallery, run to the courtyard, because Sebas is watching the rain pour down. What a great downpour! Besides, no classes. And did you see how it’s raining? He sits down next to Sebastián, who says nothing, doesn’t even stop watching the downpour, doesn’t look like Sebastián, he’s so serious! Tingo stays there a long time, silent, not knowing what to do. Then, when he’s about to break out crying, Sebastián looks at him with his finest smile and asks, Do you know the story of my Uncle Noel?

  Following this I will transcribe, without altering a single comma, the story that Sebastián told Tingo during the torrential downpour that fell on the Island.

  Many years ago there was a rainstorm like today, and even worse, so the earth was flooded, there was more water in the Island than in all the seas around it, my mamá had an uncle named Noel who lived on a ranch called El Area, between Caimito and Guanajay, Uncle Noel was a widower and he only had one daughter who died when she turned fifteen, what did she die of? nothing at all, when she turned fifteen instead of growing up and getting prettier like girls do when they turn fifteen, she got smaller and uglier, so small and so ugly that my uncle fed her milk from an eyedropper but first he would always cover his eyes with a bandage not to catch a fright, the girl was named Gardenia, one fine day, before the downpour I told you about had a chance to start, Gardenia shrank to a point and disappeared, then my uncle felt all alone, and he dedicated himself to his animals with more love than before on his little ranch, he had every kind of animal there you can imagine, Uncle Noel loved animals, he even had elephants (not like the elephants you see in the zoo that come from Africa and India, no, no way, he had Cuban elephants that don’t exist anymore because a sadness epidemic killed them off), what were Cuban elephants like? small, red, with white ears, no tusks, or just one tusk, I’m not too sure, well as I was saying Uncle Noel had animals of every species when the downpour started, and it went on for a long, long time, so much water fell that the houses lifted up off their foundations, and houses from Baracoa landed in Guane, and houses from Guane ended up in Guantánamo, and folks would greet each other when they passed, and they kept on doing their chores up there on the uncontrollable river, unable to stop, my mother says they didn’t get around on buses but on little boats, like in Venice, a city where it also rained a lot one time, Uncle Noel didn’t want his house to drift away, he tied it up real tight with several ropes and he stuck the animals inside, waiting for the rain to stop, since he liked the animals and took good care of them, and while the rest of the animals on the island were drowning my uncle’s were getting fat and looking better than ever, when the rain let up the earth looked like it had been swept clean with giant brooms, the houses were all in the farthest-off places, some had even ended up on Turquino Peak, and there weren’t any animals, and the most terrible thing was: even though the rain had let up, people didn’t believe it, because it had rained so much their ears had gotten used to the sound, and so even though not a drop was falling they kept on hearing the rainstorm, Uncle Noel, who was always an intelligent man, said to himself, Maybe this rain I’m hearing now isn’t the real thing, but just what’s left in my ears from the rain before, and to test it he sent a nanny goat named Chantal out to the fields, and the little goat came back a little later chewing grass, nice and dry, not even mud on her hooves, so that way my uncle learned it had stopped raining, even though my mother says that Uncle Noel kept on hearing the falling rain to the end of his days, when he died, because he died when a hundred years had accumulated in his heart just a few minutes before he fell silent he said that he was drowning, that he was going in a row-boat along an enormous river and that the boat was foundering and he was going down with the boat, and he wasn’t in any boat on any river, just in his own bed and it was a splendid day, my mother tells, what’s for sure is that it’s thanks to the animals that Uncle Noel saved in his house at El Area that we have animals in Cuba today, otherwise we’d all be eating grass and flowers, since aside from my uncle’s animals all the others drowned in that rainstorm many years ago, because it was a harder storm than today, and look how hard it’s raining.

  This rain is just like that other one, he remembers it, or rather, he believes he remembers it. It rained so furiously that Havana was disappearing, being erased, through the window you could only see mirages of walls and balconies. The empty street. Where did they live then? Maybe in the boarding house on Jovellar Street, the landlady was named Tangle (no, Tangle was the woman at the boarding house on Barcelona and Galiano; the one at Jovellar was named Japan, yes, Japan, a fat and jovial light, will vanish like smoke and leave your body in darkness, and we’ll begin to live in the shadows, and from the shadows other evils will stem, no mother will remain who loves her son, no just king, no man who understands his fellow man, though we speak the same language we won’t understand one another, no one will love, no one, the most passionate letters will be blank pages, the fieriest poems will read like tongue twisters, this will be the kingdom of hatred, and the kingdom of hatred is that of betrayal and lies and desolation and hypocrisy, masks will take the place of faces, your true face will vanish as well like smoke behind the mask, and we’ll live with pistols and knives and razors beneath our pillows, we’ll never sleep, waiting for a friend to fall, for an enemy pretending to be kind to fall, wives will turn in their husbands for the executioner to behead, husbands will dismember their wives to deny the executioners the pleasure of executing them, many will flee, thousands will flee, they’ll take to the sea, swim and swim until they reach the mainland, they will gain nothing, they will profit nothing, a country is an illness for which there is no cure, they will leave, indeed, and something will not let them sleep
, they’ll cry for what they left behind though they leave nothing behind in reality, for never, hear me well, never can anyone completely escape the place they were born, a man who leaves his birthplace leaves half of himself and carries off only the other half, which is usually the sicklier half, and when he is far away, no matter where he be, he feels the missing arm or leg or lung and thinks: I’m a man suffering from nostalgia, and he’s already dead, and this rainstorm is but the beginning, and much more, much much more, for after this rain the drought will last for decades, in the countryside, the lovely countryside of which poets and troubadours sing, trees will turn to ash beneath the relentless blazing sun, the sun itself will grow to punish us, the rivers will run dry, cattle will die, animals will fall victim to thirst and exhaustion, only the buzzards will be fruitful and multiply, and the fish of the sea will retreat from the scorched coastline, the phantom of plague will knock on open doors, blood will turn to pus, hunger will enter like a shadow in our bodies instead of love, and believe me, a man suffering from hunger will be the first candidate for betrayal, for betraying and for being betrayed, there you have two simple acts, like drinking spoiled water from spoiled wells, and on the footsteps of betrayal comes robbery, doors and windows will be barred in vain, robbery brought on by desperation can break through barbed wire, and the persecutions will begin, the same ones who rob will keep watch over us, we’ll live beneath their persistent gazes, the eyes behind the windows, the eyes on the rooftops, the eyes in the ground, the eyes in desire and in sorrow, even the eyes in our hearts, and when the eyes penetrate fine as needles into our dreams, the buildings will begin to crumble, impelled by imaginary hurricanes, even the atmosphere will tire of all the atrocities, under the dust, under the ruins, we still won’t find the peace of death, not even that peace is within our reach, for there will be judges beneath the earth, to judge and pass sentence, everything we once said, the most innocent song, will come back to be used against us, to die a sweet death you must lead a decent life, and here we’ll all fall into wretchedness like flies into flypaper, good-bye family, good-bye treasures we never knew, good-bye mercy, and good-bye tenderness, and there are things of which I will not speak, I don’t know how to name them, I have seen them in dreams, and no matter how fierce dreams are they can’t always be explained, what I say and enumerate here is the beginning of a much greater terror that I predict, of which this rainstorm is but the beginning, call me crazy, yes, crazy if you wish, it’s all the same, crazy means you’re still brave enough to tell the truth.