Mona and Other Tales (15 page)

But before going in, Adela pulled out the plaque by the door that read VILLA ALBA, FLOWERS AND HANDMADE KNITS, and that same afternoon she replaced it with a more colorful, shining one that said HALLEY'S COMET.

Halley's Comet became one of the most famous and prestigious brothels in all Cárdenas, as well as in the whole province. Experts in these matters declare that it could have competed with those in the capital, Havana, and even with those in Barcelona and Paris. For many years it was splendidly serviced by its founders, the Alba sisters, well educated and generous matrons like none you can find at present (1950). They knew how to blend love and love of money, pleasure and wisdom, tenderness and lust. But here we must fall silent, because as Knights of the Order of the New Galaxy and as astronomers decorated by the Municipality of Jagüey Grande, we are sworn not to disclose any more details about these ladies' lives. We can only bear witness and, with ample experience in such matters, state that none of them died a virgin.

Miami Beach, January 1986

Blacks

BLACKS WERE not black anymore. They were extremely white. Perhaps for the sake of tradition, or due to a resentment more powerful than reason or even than triumph itself, whites, who were totally black and in full power, were still calling blacks blacks and persecuting them into extinction, notwithstanding the fact that blacks were now indisputably white. It happened at the End, after the Fifth Superthermal War (“The Necessary War”), and during the consolidation of the Great-Universal-Liberated-Monolithic Republic, that the persecution of blacks reached its peak and caused them all to perish. The hunt had been really spectacular. The invisible flamethrowers, the sound waves that cut bodies asunder, the disintegrators that reduced them to minute luminous particles and cast them into the air, the superatomic rats, and, most fiercely, the pack of supersonic hounds we acquired from our enemy, the Seventh Galaxy, under a merciless treaty that almost totally ruined us, helped dispatch the persecuted in record time, far exceeding the expectations of our Ministry of Harassment. During the deceitful dawns (fortunately abolished now), and coming from the indefatigable cauldrons, from the areas of conveniently contaminated air, from the metallic talons of the beasts of prey, from everywhere, we were forced to hear their howls, at last forever silenced. Of course, in those glorious battles there were numerous titans, numerous decorated fighters, and many who perished but were honored as well. The list of unsung heroes—the patriotic soldiers that most of us tend to forget, the illustrious dead, the children imbued with hate and courage—that list is almost as endless as our infinite empire.

Before ending this document, I would like to put on record the following curious fact. It's about the brief life history of a repressor of blacks, of one of our most bloodthirsty enforcers. It has been said that he alone eliminated from this sacred domain the highest percentage of blacks. In spite of the grand truce, without him and the heroic attitude of our soldiers, women, and children, it has been said, such perfect extermination would not have been feasible. And some of those despicable creatures would still be found up to our times, lurking in remote corners and wandering amid the debris.

“Great Superfirst Repressor of the First and Eternal Great Empire!” he shouted under the far-reaching columns of the Superfirst Repressor Palace. “I have exterminated all the blacks!”

Then the Great Sun—our Great Superfirst Repressor— came out on the Superfirst balcony.

“You are mistaken,” said our Superfirst Excelsitude, raising his excelsiors: “One still remains.”

And taking out his permanent disintegrator, he eliminated the repressor.

When he fell, kicking strangely, we could all bear witness to the color of his skin: it was repulsively white. There was no doubt: he was black.

I still remember his screaming, and how he met his end.

La Habana, 1973

Traitor

I AM GOING to speak fast, just as it comes. So don't expect much from your little gadget. Don't think you're going to get a lot from what I tell you, and that you are going to patch it up, add this and that, make it into a big opus, or whatever, and become famous on my account. . . . Though I don't know, maybe if I speak just out of my head, it might work out better for you. It might go over better. You could exploit it more. Because you are the devil. But since you're already here, and with all that paraphernalia, I'll talk. A little. Not much. Only to show you that without us you are nothing. The ashtray is over there, on top of the sink, use it if you want. . . . What a show, impeccable shirt and all—is it silk? Can you get silk now?—but you'll have to stand there, or sit on that chair with the ruined cane seat—yes, I know it could be repaired now— and you can start asking me.

And what do you know about him? What does anyone know? Now that Fidel Castro has been ousted, well, overthrown, or he got tired, everybody is talking, everybody can talk. The system has changed again. Oh, now everybody is a hero. Now, everybody was against him. But then, when on every corner, day and night, there was a Block Surveillance Committee always watching every door, every window, every gate, every light, and every one of our moves, and every word, and every silence, and what we heard on the radio, and what we did not, and who were our friends, and who were our enemies, and what kind of sex life we had, and what kind of letters, and diseases, and dreams . . . All of these were also being checked. Ah, I see you don't believe me. I'm an old woman. Think whatever you want to. I am old, and out of my mind. Keep thinking that way. It's better. Now it's possible to think—oh, you don't understand me. Do you not understand that then one could not think? But now you can, right? Yes. And that in itself should make me worry, if there were still something that could make me worry. If you can think out loud, you have nothing left to say. But listen to me: they are still around. They have poisoned everything, and they are still around. And now anything that is done will be because of them, either for them or against them—not now, though—but because of them. . . . I'm sorry. What am I saying? Is it true I can say whatever I please? Is it true? Tell me. At first I couldn't believe it. And I still can't believe it. Times change. I hear talk about freedom again. Screams. That is bad. Shouts of “Freedom” usually mean just the opposite. I know. I saw. . . . There must be a reason why you came, looked me up, and you're here now with your little machine.

It works, doesn't it? Remember that I'm not going to repeat anything. There will be plenty of people to spin their tales. Now we'll have the testimonials, of course, everybody has a story to tell, everybody makes a big fuss, everybody screams, and everybody was—isn't that nice?—against the tyranny. And I don't doubt it. Oh, but then! Who didn't have a political badge, awarded, of course, by the regime? Make sure you find out, didn't your father belong to the militia, didn't he do voluntary work?
Voluntary,
that was the word. Even I, when Castro was thrown out of power, almost got executed as a
castrista.
How awful! What saved me were the letters I had written to my sister, who was living in exile. What if I didn't have them anymore? She had to send them back to me fast, or else I would be dead and gone. And that's why I haven't dared go out of the house, because some, a lot, of that still exists. And I don't want to get any closer to it. I . . . so you are asking me to speak, to contribute, to cooperate—I'm sorry, that's not the way you say it now—with whatever I know, because you intend to write a book or something, with one of the victims. A double victim, you will have to say. Or triple. Or better, a victimized victim. Or better still, a victim victimized by the victims. Well, you'll have to fix that. Write whatever you want. You don't need to give it to me for approval. I don't want to see anything. I'm taking advantage, however, of this freedom of “expression” to tell you that you are a vulture. Turkey vultures, we called them. Have they all been eliminated? No longer needed? What wonderful birds! They used to feed on carrion, on corpses, and then they soared into the skies. And what was the reason for their extermination? Didn't they clean up the island under every regime? And how they gorged themselves. . . . Perhaps they got poisoned by eating the bodies of those executed by justice—is that still how you say it?—that is, by you. . . . Listen, will you bring that machine closer to me? Quickly, because I'm in a rush, and I'm old and tired. And to tell you the truth, I've been poisoned too. This machine—is it working?—was very popular, though people usually never knew when it was being used. . . . Today you tell me what you're going to do and why you have come to see me. We talk. And nobody is watching at the corner, right? And nobody will come and search my house after you're gone, right? Anyway, I have nothing else to hide. And is it true I can say whether I'm for something or against it? Right now I can, if I want to, speak against the government, and nothing would happen? Maybe. Is it so, really? Yes, everything is like that now. Right there on the corner, they were selling beer today. There was a lot of noise. Music, they call it. People don't look so scraggly or so angry anymore. There are no more slogans on the trees. People are going out, I see it, and you can get genuinely sad, with your own brand of sadness, I mean. People have food, aspirations, dreams (Do they have dreams?), and they dress in bright colors. But I still don't believe this, as I already told you. I've been poisoned. I have seen . . . but, oh, well, we should go straight to the point, which is what you want. We cannot waste any more time. Now we have to work, right? Before, the main thing was to pretend you were working. Now we have aspirations. . . . It's a simple story. Yes, of course. But anyway, you won't understand these things. Practically nobody can anymore. These things can't be understood unless you have experienced them, like almost everything. . . . He wrote some books that should be around somewhere. Or maybe not. Maybe they were burned during the early dismantling of the regime. Then, at the very beginning, of course, those things happened. Inherited bad habits. I really know it's been difficult to overcome all these “tendencies”—can you still call them that? All those books, as you know, spoke well of the deposed regime. However, it's all a lie. You had to go to the fields, and he went. Nobody really knew that when he was working like a maniac, he was not doing it out of loyalty to the regime, but out of pure hate. You really had to see the fury with which he broke the lumps of earth, how he sowed the seeds, weeded, dug. Those earned the big bonus points then. Oh, God! There was such hate in him while he was doing everything and contributing to everything. How much he hated the whole thing. . . . They made him—he made himself—“a model youth,” “a frontline worker,” and they awarded him “the pennant.” If an extra shift of guard duty was needed, he would volunteer. If one more hand was needed at the sugarcane harvest, there he went. During his military service, was there anything he could say no to, when everything was official, patriotic, revolutionary, that is, inexcusable? And even out of the service, everything was compulsory. But by then it was worse, because he was not a youth anymore. He was a man, and he had to survive; that is, he needed a room, and also, for instance, a pressure cooker; and, for instance, a pair of pants. Would you believe me if I told you that the authorization for buying a shirt, and being able to pick it up, involved political privilege? I see you don't believe me. So be it. But I hope you always can do that. . . . Since he hated the system so much, he spoke little; and since he didn't speak much, he didn't contradict himself, while others did, and what they said one day, they had to retract or deny the next—a problem of dialectics, people called it. And then, since he didn't contradict himself, he became a well-trusted man, a respected man. He would never interrupt the weekly meetings. You had to see his attitude of approval while in reality he was dreaming of sailing, traveling, or being somewhere else, in “the land of the enemy” (as it was called), from which he would fly back carrying a bomb; and right there at the meeting—just like so many that he, ominously, had attended and applauded—in a plaza full of slaves, he would drop the bomb. . . . And so, for his “exemplary discipline and dutifulness in the Circles of Study” (that was the name given to the compulsory sessions on political indoctrination), he received another diploma. He would be the first one, when the time came, to read from
Granma
—I still remember the name of the official newspaper—not because he was really interested, but because his hatred for that publication was such that in order to get it over with quickly (as you would with anything you abhor), he would read it right away. When he raised his hand to donate this or that—we donated everything in public—how he secretly laughed at himself; how, inwardly, he exploded. . . . He would always do volunteer work for four or five extra hours—and pity thee if you didn't! He did his compulsory guard duty with a rifle on his shoulder, and the building he was protecting had been built by the former regime—he was protecting his own hell. How many times had he thought of blowing his head off while shouting “Down with Castro,” or something like that . . . ?

But life is something else. People change. Do you know what fear is? Do you know what hatred is? Do you know what hope is? Do you know what total helplessness is? . . . Take care of yourself, and do not take anything for granted, don't trust anything. Not even now. Even less now. Now that everything seems trustworthy, this is precisely the time to mistrust. Later it will be too late. Then you will have to obey orders. You are young, you don't know anything. But your father, no doubt, was in the militia. Your father, no doubt . . . Don't take part in anything. Leave!—can one leave the country now? It's incredible. To leave . . . “If I could leave,” he would tell me, he would whisper in my ear after coming home from one of those everlasting events, after three hours of cheering. “If I could leave, if I could escape by swimming away, since any other way is impossible, or soar above this hell and get away from it all . . .” And I:
Calm down, calm down, you know very well that
is impossible; fragments of fingernails is what the fishermen are
bringing back. Out there, they have orders to shoot point-blank,
even if you surrender. Look at those searchlights. . . .
And he himself at times had to take care of those same searchlights, and clean and shine the guns, that is, to watch over the tools of his own subjugation. And how disciplined he was, how much passion he put into it. You might say he was trying to create a cover-up through his actions, so that they would not reveal his authentic being. And he would come home exhausted, dirty, full of slaps on his back, and badges of honor. “Oh, if I had a bomb,” he would then tell me, or rather whisper into my ear, “I would have blown myself up with it all. A bomb so powerful that there would be nothing left. Nothing. Not even me.” And I:
Calm down, for goodness' sake, wait, don't say anything
else, they can hear you, don't spoil everything with your rage. . . .
Disciplined, polite, hardworking, discreet, unpretentious, normal, easygoing, extremely easygoing, well adapted to the system precisely for being its complete opposite—how could they not make him a member of the Party?

Was there any job he didn't do? And he was fast. What criticism didn't he accept with humility? . . . And that immense hatred inside, that feeling of being humiliated, annihilated, buried, unable to say anything and having to submit in silence. And how silently!, how enthusiastically!, in order not to be even more humiliated, more annihilated, totally wiped out. So that someday, perhaps, he could be himself, take revenge: speak out, take action, live. . . . Ah, how often he wept at night, very quietly in his room, in there, the next one on this side. He wept out of rage and hatred. I shall never be able to recount—it would take more than a lifetime—all the vituperations he used to rattle out against the system. “I can't go on, I can't go on,” he would tell me. And it was true. Embracing me, embracing me—remember that I was also young, we were both young, just like you; though I don't know, maybe you're not so young: now everybody is so well fed. . . . Embracing me, he would say: “I can't take it any longer; I can't take it any longer. I'm going to cry out all my hatred. I'm going to cry out the truth,” he whispered, choking. And me? What did I do? I used to calm him down. I would tell him:
Are you insane?
— and I would rearrange his badges.
If you do it, they are going to
shoot you. Keep on pretending, like everybody else. Pretend even
more than the others, make fun of him that way. Calm down, don't
talk nonsense.
He never stopped performing his tasks dutifully, only being himself for a while at night, when he came to me to unburden his soul. Never, not even now when there is official approval, and even encouragement, did I ever hear anybody reject the regime so strongly. Since he was in the inner circle, he knew the whole operation, its most minute atrocities. Come morning he would return, enraged but silenced, to his post, to the meeting, to the fields, to the raising of hands to volunteer. He accumulated a lot of “merits.” It was then that the Party “oriented” him—and you don't know what that word meant then—to write a series of biographies of high officials. “Do it,” I would say to him, “or you will lose all you have accomplished until now. It would be the end.” And so he became famous— they made him famous. He moved away and was assigned a large house. He married the woman they oriented him to. . . . I had a sister in exile. She used to come, though, and visit me. Very cautiously, she would bring his biographies under her arm. And she told me the truth: those people were all monsters. . . . Were they? Or were we? What do you think? Have you found out anything about your father? Have you learned anything else? Why did you choose precisely this tainted character for your job? Who are you? Why are you looking at me that way? Who was your father? Your father . . .” At the first opportunity, I'll leave,” he used to tell me. “I know there is strict surveillance, that it's practically impossible to defect, that there are many spies, many criminals on the loose; and that even if I manage to, someone shall murder me in exile. But before that I shall speak out. Before that, I will say what I feel, I will speak the truth. . . .”
Calm down, don't talk,
I would tell him—and we were not that young anymore—
don't do anything crazy.
And he: “Do you think that I can spend my whole life pretending? Don't you realize that going so much against myself I won't be me anymore? Don't you see that I'm already but a shadow, a marionette, an actor who is never off the stage, where he only plays a shady character?” And I:
Wait, wait.
And I, understanding, weeping with him, and harboring as much, or even more, hatred in me—after all, I am, or was, a woman—pretending just like everybody else, conspiring secretly in my thoughts, in my soul, and begging him to wait, to wait. And he managed to wait. Until the moment came.