Mona and Other Tales (10 page)

The Parade Ends

To Lázaro Gómez Carriles, witness

NOW SHE'S ESCAPING ME. Again I'm going to lose her in this sea of legs so close together that they seem to blend into a jumble of clothes and compressed bodies, all these bare feet sinking into pools of urine and mud, into mounds of excrement. I'm looking for her; I keep looking for her as if she were (as in fact she is) my sole salvation. But again she is escaping me, the bitch. There she surely goes, miraculously clearing her path, slithering away between the soiled shoes, between bodies so tightly packed they cannot collapse even if they faint, amid the tears and urine, liberating herself from me as she slips away and, at the same time, by who knows what sort of unique intuition, managing to elude being fatally trampled. My life depends on you, my life depends on you, I tell her, slithering along just like her. And I go after her, sinking into the shit and the mud. I continue to pursue her, laboriously but mechanically pushing away bellies, buttocks, feet, arms, thighs; a whole mass of stinking flesh and bones, a whole mélange of screaming, shifting bulges wanting like me to move about, to turn around, to go somewhere else, and causing only greater compression or balancing on the other foot while stretching and convulsing but unable to break through, to take a step, to run, to truly get moving, or accomplish some displacement, some advance; all of us, like prey, caught in the same spiderweb that yields on one side, pulls back on the other, and lifts here, without ever permitting a breakthrough anywhere. So people retreat, advance, move backward, forward, between knee-bumping, kicking and being kicked, now raising arms, heads, noses high toward the sky in order to breathe, to see something other than the fusion of their own stinking bodies. But I proceed, I have not yet lost sight of her, and I continue pushing away bodies, dragging myself, being hit and cursed, but not giving up, still going after her. On this (on her) I'm betting my life. Life above all, life in spite of it all, life under any conditions, deprived of everything, deprived of you (and in spite of you), in the loud noise now rising between the cries and the singing, because they sing and sing again, the national anthem, no less. Life now, while I go after you, stepping through the excrement to the tune (or the screaming) of the anthem, their refuge and justification, instant solution, support; and as for the other things (what other things?), we shall see. Now I care only about that lizard, so crafty and covered with excrement, that damned lizard, again scurrying away from me among the thousands and thousands of feet also mired in shit.
Life
. . . He had reached again, like so many years ago, that extreme situation in which life is not even a useless and humiliating repetition, but is rather the ceaseless remembering of a repetition that in the beginning was nothing but a repetition; he had reached that place, that ultimate situation, that extreme point at which the fact of being alive stops being a matter to consider, and becomes instead something one cannot even be really sure is true. Standing there, or actually bent over, since his loft did not allow him to stand up straight, he was just staring, in that old room of a hotel that had seen much better days and was now inhabited by people like him, or even worse—screaming creatures with no other concept or principle or dream besides being able, regardless of means or of cost to anyone, to survive, that is, not to end up starving to death. From his motionless position, he was not looking at the past or the future, since both were not merely gloomy, but absurd; he was really looking at the makeshift steps to the “upper floor,” that is, to the loft where he could not even walk scrunched up but had to move on all fours so as not to slam his head into the ceiling. There he was, between the front wall by the hallway and the other wall by the sidewall of another building. Now he moved a bit, and his eyes met unexpectedly with his own image reflected in the mirror bolted to the door (kept provisionally closed) that faced the hallway. He was not the same person anymore; he was this other one now. He no longer ran through the savanna or the grasslands. He ran sometimes now, but through the hysterical mob, trying to climb on a crammed bus or to get a number in the line to buy bread or to buy yogurt. So, with effort, he drew back from his image—the present one—to move two body-lengths to reach the other end of his den, his kingdom, and sit on his makeshift seat, also put together in a combination of misery and necessity. It was like a stool covered by a parody of a cushion. Then, before he could think about a solution, before he could even think of how to think of a solution, there was loud noise: the violent scraping of a kitchen pot, a child's shriek or howl (to give it some name), the blare of voices from a television at full volume and several radios, from someone also pounding on the elevator door, and from a man endlessly yelling out, at the top of his lungs, at someone who evidently was not in or was deaf, didn't want to respond or had died; that is, at neighbors, at his fellow human beings, which made him forget whatever had crossed his mind like a brief gust of wind, or that he had tried to conceptualize—what was it, what was it. And as he listened to the incessant pandemonium, a tremendous calm invaded him, a pervasive feeling of impotence and resignation that submerged him in a kind of stupor, or inertia, well known to him for many years. It was an overwhelming sensation of abandonment, of mortal dejection (or consolation), that made him feel beyond all resistance, all capability and vitality (a quiescence, a weariness), a certainty of real and irrevocable death. Yes, all of that was true, except for a saving grace: he had a friend. And therefore he could still breathe. Not with ease but with a lot of difficulty, by lifting his head, his nose; by opening his mouth toward the sky, by raising his arms, too, and separating himself, for only in this way could he take in a bit of the entirely contaminated, foul air, and go on, that is, dive back into the cacophony and the sweaty bodies, and again drag himself through the slippery, heavily trodden muck, pushing away legs, bundles, feet, trying to get to wherever his friend was, because he was certain that he was there, of course, in that mob, somewhere within that mob, as a part of that mob; that was why he pushed, lifted his head, inhaled, scrutinized the crowd, and continued pushing bodies and bundles away, without saying “excuse me” (who would apologize in this situation?), and he went on, at times calling out to him, trying to make himself heard over the ruling pandemonium. And the worst of it was that to continue was becoming more difficult by the minute. More people came, they kept coming, more and more people were jumping over the fence to get in. The gate had been closed already, but they were getting in at all costs, kicking and hitting. What a scandal, what an uproar. Through the dust and the shootings they kept coming, climbing up and vaulting the fence: old people, fat women, children and youths, mostly youths, all trying to reach the wire fence, while the rows of soldiers were becoming denser. More policemen, militiamen, people in uniform or in civilian disguise, were coming to stop the others—the crowds outside—from getting close to the fence. It was no longer a police cordon, but a triple cordon of fully armed officers. Now there was machine-gun clatter, and shouts of “Bastard, stop right there!” accompanied by the commotion and howls of those who, right there, in front of everybody, were being gunned down before climbing the fence, before touching it, before even getting close to it. Immediately, many men (soldiers in and out of uniform) hurriedly exited their Alfa Romeos, dragged the dead into their cars, and sped down Fifth Avenue. Now it was not only dangerous for the agitated masses outside who wanted to break the cordon (rather, cordons) and get in by any possible means, but for those inside, also being gunned down. Someone, one of the top dogs, a
pincho,
a
mayimbe,
abruptly stopped his car close to the fence and, enraged beyond control, started firing. Screaming in horror, the masses retreated, although they actually couldn't, squeezing even more tightly against one another, and hiding their heads; they folded back as if trying to recoil into themselves. Anyone who was felled by a bullet, or who had simply slipped, could never stand up again, but would instead have as a last vision the thousands upon thousands of feet crossing overhead again and again, in circular stampede. “The national anthem, the national anthem,” somebody shouted. And suddenly, out of the immense mass of people under siege, came a strong, unanimous voice, a loud chant, impudent, out of tune, one of a kind, projected beyond the fence and into the night.
This is absurd, absurd,
he told himself, but for a moment he interrupted his search, he stopped;
absurd, absurd,
he repeated, that anthem again,
absurd, absurd,
but he was crying. . . . Horrendous, it was horrendous, because everything was horrendous, frightening, now, again, and forever and ever; but worse, much worse now, because he couldn't afford the luxury, as before, of wasting time, his own time. His body bent within the narrow, low-ceilinged cubicle, he reviewed and reviewed once again the time he had lived, the time he had wasted, and he stopped there, as always, on the essential, makeshift steps, under the ceiling, also essential and makeshift, before the essential and makeshift table (a vat cover on top of a barrel); makeshift, makeshift, makeshift, everything was makeshift, improvised; and besides, he himself, and everybody else, had to be always improvising and accepting. Listening to improvised and incessant speeches; living in an improvised misery, where even the terror he suffered today would be replaced provisionally tomorrow by a new one, renovated, reinforced, augmented just like that, unexpectedly. Suffering from improvised laws that suddenly fostered crime instead of decreasing it; suffering improvised angry attacks against him, naturally, and against those who lived like him, at the margin, in a cloud, in another world, that is, in a room like this, ten by twelve, makeshift, on a makeshift loft, alone . . . To go out, to go down the stairs littered with garbage (the elevator was never working) and get to the street, what for? To go out was to prove once more that there was no way out. To go out meant to learn again that there was no place to go. To go out was to run the risk of being asked for his ID, for information, and, in spite of his always carrying all of the regime's calamities—ID, syndicate ID, working ID, Obligatory Military Service ID, Committee for the Defense of the Revolution ID—in spite of his being, in fact, like a meek and noble beast, with all the cattle markings that his owner had firebranded on him, to go out meant the risk of failing to look good enough in the eyes of any policeman, who could designate him (just by moral impression) as
an individual of doubtful character, suspicious, not solid-looking, untrustworthy,
which was enough to land him in jail, as had already happened on several occasions. And he knew what that meant. On the other hand, what kind of scene would he find outside but the anatomy of his own sadness, the overwhelming spectacle of a city that was crumbling, of taciturn figures, either evasive or aggressive, all of them starved and desperate as well as harassed? Figures, in addition, already alien to any form of dialogue, any intimacy, any possibility of communication, and simply ready, out of vital necessity, to grab other people's wallets, wristwatches, even eyeglasses from their owners' faces, if they had been imprudent enough to go out with them on, and then to start running, without a word, into the dilapidated surroundings. Besides, it was not completely true—and this was his triumph, his anchor to salvation, his consolation—that he felt, or was, totally alone. . . . And with this consolation, this joy, he remained where he was: one foot on the makeshift steps, face blurred in the ramshackle mirror, head bent so as not to hit the low ceiling of his loft—serene, still, and waiting, because he was sure that his friend would arrive any minute now, as he did every morning. Yes, that was the way it would be; his friend would come. Finally he stepped into his makeshift room and sat on his makeshift seat. But where was he, where was he headed, where could he have gone; yet you must keep moving, he told himself; you must forge ahead, you must find him somewhere, on the roof, up in a tree; he cannot have vanished, he must be in this tumult, within this immense crowd that is growing bigger and becoming more hysterical. Now the people have captured someone, and they are throwing him up in the air and catching him so as to keep bouncing him back up; it's a policeman who had infiltrated their ranks, they say, someone who was trying to lower the Peruvian flag from its pole. And now hundreds of desperate people's arms, thousands of closed fists, are going after him, hurtling him back and forth. Let's lynch him, Execute him, Off with his head, people are shouting, while the man disappears and reappears, to be swallowed again by the sea of desperate people, until he is hurled outside the fence. There the shooting continues, at the trees, in the air, at the cars which from a considerable distance and at great speed are trying to break through the barriers and get closer. I go where the furor is most intense, I look around, and push my way through, I keep searching every anguished face, among those who have fainted, whether from the beatings or because of lack of food, among those who are asleep on their feet. . . . But nothing, nothing, I don't see you, though I know, I know very well, that you're somewhere around here, probably pretty close and also searching for me. We are here, we are both here, though we have not been able to find each other yet, with the threats and the shootings, with the awful smells becoming more intolerable all the time, and with the riots, the beatings, the fights, the conflicts that hunger and desperation, and this melding together, are causing; but at least we're able to scream, now, right now, to scream, to scream. . . . To leave, to get out, that was the question. Before, the concern had been to join the rebels, to seek liberation, to revolt, to go into hiding, to find emancipation and independence. But now, none of that was possible, not because it had been achieved or was no longer necessary, but because now it was not advisable to express any of those ideas out loud, or even in a whisper, and so both of us keep talking while we walk in fear along the Malecón, now practically deserted though it's not yet ten o'clock. The problem is not to say “We must leave.” I know that as well as you do, his friend said. The problem, the question, is how to get out. Yes, we agreed, how to get out. Maybe in one, or two, truck inner tubes, you say, with a canvas cover and a pair of oars. And then set out into the open sea. There's no other way out. That's true, that's true, I said, there is no other possible solution. I can get the inner tubes, you say, and the canvas. You have to keep them in your room. My family must not know anything. But that is not the hard part, you said. It's the other stuff. The surveillance. You know there is surveillance everywhere, and one cannot even get near a beach at night. The biggest problem is precisely how to get to the shore with two inner tubes and food and a few water bottles. Yes, I was saying. That's right. First we have to inspect the place, study it, that is, go there without carrying anything, and see which is the best spot. I heard that maybe in Pinar del Río, you were saying. At least the currents are stronger there, they can pull us out, take us far. Some ship will pick us up. They have to; once we're out at sea, someone will detect our presence and pick us up. But listen, I say, maybe we'll get picked up by a Russian ship, or Chinese, or Cuban, and we'll be brought back, except not here, to the Malecón or to the street, but to jail. . . . It's five years now for what they call “illegal exit,” you say. And where is the legal exit? I asked. Would it be possible, perhaps, that if we wanted to leave, we could do it normally, as people do anywhere in the world, or almost anywhere? Of course not, you said. But they, they are the ones who make the laws here, and the ones who put us in jail. That's true, I said. Not only is there the problem of getting out to sea, but also of getting to the other side of that sea. Have to get there somehow, you say. Without their finding out that we are thinking about leaving. They, they, I was saying. But no matter how much they watch, they cannot keep track of everything; they can't, even if that's all they do with their lives, watch over us, check on us every minute, nonstop. Perhaps you're right, you said. And on the way back (it was better not to talk about this in my room), we finished rounding out our plan, our escape, our possibility, our attempt, but now she has disappeared again, she sneaked out, slipping out from below, through the mud and the excrement. Changing color, she has escaped from me again. In the crowd someone squeals. A woman jumps about hysterically, putting her hands to her thighs. “A bug, a bug,” she says, “a bug crept inside.” And the woman keeps on jumping. Until she scurries out of her skirt. There she goes, fleeing again, changing color and trying to hide, the bitch, in between the muddy shoes and bare feet, climbing up someone's thigh, jumping onto somebody else's back, now sliding between the sweaty necks pressed to one another, over the tumult that recedes, forming a single mass on the ground. I go over them too, I step on the face of someone (a woman, a child, an old man, I don't know) who doesn't have the energy to protest, and I go on, crouching on all fours now, sometimes raising a noisy chorus of complaints, besides getting kicked, shoved about, but watching her still, following her, keeping her in sight, now much closer. . . . But they, it was true, they did control everything, watch everything, listen to everything. They had thought of everything. That's why they came very early. I went down in a hurry from the loft, thinking it was you. It was them. In one moment it all happened, it continues happening, it feels as if it had already happened. I had thought about it (expected it) so many times, imagined so often how it would happen, that now, when they come in and say, “Don't move, you're under arrest,” and begin their search, I don't really know if everything is happening this instant, if it already happened, or if it keeps always happening. Since the space is so small, they don't need much time for their search. Two of them up in the loft turn everything upside down; one of them stays below, guarding me; the others look under the cushions, in the double ceiling, in the improvised closet. And there they are, of course, the inner tubes and canvas, and something that I didn't even know you had been able to get (which is now the most damaging): a compass. The search is quick and thorough, all done in front of me, but as if I didn't exist. Papers, letters, books, the inner tubes, the canvas, and, of course, the compass, which I didn't even know you had put in the closet; every object at this point becomes evidence, motive, probable cause, degree of guilt. A photo and a foreign pullover become for them convincing proofs, “instruments” of the same crime. They finally order me to take off my shoes in order to inspect the soles of my feet, then ask me to get fully dressed again. “Let's go,” one of them tells me, putting his hand on my neck. We leave that way. The hallway is now totally empty, though I know that behind their doors, kept ajar, my neighbors are all there, fearful, watching. A woman who lost an eye when someone threw a stone at her, a man whose arm had been blown away by a bullet, another whose legs are swollen, almost bursting, a woman who presses against her belly and shouts that she doesn't want to have her baby, because when she does, they'll force her out of here; someone who is groping blindly because he lost his contact lenses. “Quiet, quiet, let's see if we can listen to the Voice of America.” There are shouts, and more shouts demanding silence, but nobody shuts up; everybody has something to say, something to discuss, some solution, some complaint, some urgent business. “Let the ambassador speak, let the ambassador speak.” But nobody listens. They all want to be heard. “We're going to starve to death, going to starve to death. Those bastards want to starve us.” There are shouts, and more shouts, and I'm also shouting: I'm calling out to you, pushing away people who are constantly getting angrier, hitting anyone in my way, proceeding through the excrement, the urine, the mangled bodies and the noise (the shooting outside, the shooting again), still looking for you. . . . At night—is it night already? Who can tell whether it is night or day now . . . ? Night, night, it's night. Now it's always night. In the middle of this medieval tunnel and with an enormous lightbulb that is never turned off over one's head, of course it must always be night. Everybody brought down to the same uniform, the same shaved head, the same shout at roll call three times every day. Every day? Or every night? If I could at least get closer to the triple-barred window, I could find out what it really is now, night or day; but in order to get there one must belong to the “ruling class,” be one of the “bullies.” Little by little, time passes, we pass, I pass. It's not that I'm getting used to it, or adjusting to it, or resigning myself. I'm just still surviving. Fortunately, on your last visit you were able to bring me some books. Light, we have plenty of that here. Silence, silence, that is really something I can hardly remember. But the problem, you tell me, is being able to endure, to survive, to wait. I was lucky they didn't catch me in your room. At least I can bring you a few things. Here is some roasted cornmeal, crackers, sugar, and more books. Time passes, time passes, you say. Time, I say, does it pass? . . . It passes when you know that outside there are streets and trees, people dressed in different colors, and the sea. Visiting time is over. We say good-bye. Going back in, that is the worst moment, when (duly escorted in the all-blue line, heads shaved) we enter the tunnel, the long, narrow, stone vault leading us back to that circular cavern, which incessantly exudes bedbugs, mildew, urine, and the particular steamy smell of excrement accumulating, overflowing; and to that din, that constant shouting of the prisoners, those beatings on the bunks and against the walls, to that powerlessness, that caged violence that somehow has to come out, manifest itself, burst. If only, I think while taking cover behind the last bunk, if only they would kill each other in silence. But this din, this deafening and monotonous exploding, this cackle, this jargon, in which, like it or not, one has to participate, participate or die. Oh, if there were anyone who had a bit of interest in my soul, if anyone would like to have it forever, in exchange I would . . . But it's totally impossible to keep on thinking, with all this commotion, this dissonance, now rising and expanding its offensive. . . . As if struck by a unique plague, the trees have unexpectedly dropped all their leaves; one by one they have been yanked off and swallowed at lightning speed. Now, with their nails, with pieces of wire, with the heels of their shoes, everybody starts to rip the bark off the tree trunks; the roots, the grass, also disappear. “He who hides a piece of bread is playing with his life,” I hear someone warn. That is why I'm following you; that's why, and for much more than that. You are my goal, my salvation, my reprieve, my motivation, my love, my big, my only and true love forever. And now once again you are provoking an uproar when you slither inside the pants leg of someone who was sleeping standing up, supported by the crowd. “An ass-fucking lizard,” somebody shouts, since in spite of, or because of, everything, people are still holding on to some of their sense of humor. “No, it's a pansy,” pipes in someone else. “I drove her away when she was getting to my fly.” “It might be a macho,” a woman says, “because it got underneath my skirt.” “Let's catch her; hey, it's fresh meat.” And upon hearing that battle cry, they all jump on you. I, howling out, cross over their heads. I won't allow it, I won't allow it, I won't allow the others to be the ones who get you, even if they kill me (I already see their faces eyeing me furiously, hungry, delirious, crazed); I keep pushing, making my way, coming to get you. “The food, the food.” The alarm sounds. Shrieks. Now, forgetting about you, we all try to reach the fence, where they say the guards are beginning to leave small cardboard boxes with food rations. The crowd is growing increasingly unruly, despite some people's efforts to keep order. We know the delivery will be of only eight hundred rations, for more than ten thousand people gathered here now. There are beatings and rioting again, a lot of shouting. For the first time they have saved me, they have saved us, you and me; and so now, more urgently and with free rein, I am coming after you. I arrive. Finally I