The Lazarus Rumba (73 page)

Gracias. Gracias. The rum is good. It frees my tongue. Sí, sí, ¿cómo no?—have some yourself.

When they had rounded us up and put us in their work camps they pretended to make us soldiers. They called the camps Military Units for Aid to Production. We were sent to the same camp, the one that I once loved that you once loved and I. I thanked Chango and all the saints for that, but cursed them in the next breath because they had let me become a slave again. Monday through Friday we were out in the fields. Fidel had promised the world the world's weight in sugar. And though every year he falls far short of the goal, he promises even more for the following year and sends his henchmen out to gather more slaves. Saturday was conscript relaxation day, which meant that families that worked all week at the factories or at the mills were forced to volunteer time in the fields while we got to play fütbol games with the warden's team. Changó forbid we were to win, though we did once or twice, no matter how tired we were from our labor in the fields, and paid for it on Sunday.

Sunday was conscript education day.

Aside from a few intellectuals and artists, mostly poets, whom Fidel had begun to gather up early on, almost as soon as he took power (though Fidel's real attacks on the intelligentsia hadn't begun, that would come later, when
they
who were supposed to be the forefront thinkers of our land finally dared to question the sacredness of la Revolución), most of us were maricas, as we were always reminded, for every sentence the guards uttered to us either began or ended with gran cacho de maricón, even to the poets, many who weren't really maricas, but who had always sympathized with us. As a reward, they were lumped in with us, addressed with the same insults.

I remember. Sunday was conscript education day.

There was the room with the magazines and the green projector and the machine with the four levers, each one with a different colored plastic cap, one red, one yellow, one black, one green, a four-note pianito with an infinite number of chords. I was the only one, it seemed, who could concentrate hard enough, keep my mind enough away from the pain, to discover which lever corresponded to which wire. I told the one that I once loved that you once loved in the fields the following Monday. He said he did not care, that he did not want to know, as did most of our other campmates. Why did I imagine that they
would
want to know? That if the bearded pianito player on the other side of the long wobbly table spread with open magazines and black and white glossies pushed the green lever all the way down, then the electric current would not flow through the wire attached to the folds of your anus (that was the black lever), nor through the one attached to your right testicle (that was the red one), nor through the one attached to your left testicle (that was the yellow one); the current would flow through the one attached to the underside of your penis, to the fleshy triangle where the head meets the shaft, which Sunday after Sunday had become scabbed and scarred, and from whose apex emanated the numbness that lasted for weeks and spread to the other points of their unholy sign of the cross. The green lever was the pianito player's favorite. The others did not want to know. But I remembered.

Sunday was conscript education day.

After breakfast we would wait and see who was selected. A doctor checked us, made sure the burns from any previous sessions were properly healed. On Saturday nights some picked at the scabs and scrubbed them raw to make them seem worse, but no one ever went more than three weeks without visiting the pianito player. After they had selected us we sat on the floor in a room next to the pianito room. We heard the shouts of who was weak and who had not learned the last lesson.

Sunday is conscript education day.

When they call me in I strip down in front of the others, but I know that they will not look. If they do, then it is noted, and it is a sin paid for not much later. I walk into the room with the four-note pianito. There are three men in there, all in uniform, their crotches bulging and trembling as if some tiny field mouse has been stuffed in there and is struggling to get out. Every time I visit, it is three different men. From the look on their faces this assignment is obviously a reward. There is a long wooden table on which lie closed magazines wrapped in brown paper. The four-note pianito, a simple metal box that someone buffs and shines every Saturday night, is set at the far left hand end of the table. In its corners I can see my broken reflection. Long wires, all the same color, a ghastly gray, sprout from under it like roots. At the end, three of the wires are shaved and welded to a thin metal plate, square and thinner than a coin; one wire is thicker and is shaved longer than all the others and the silver filaments at the end are opened and spread out like a spider with many legs. I know why. There are three finger-long pieces of medical tape dangling on my side of the long table. There is another longer piece of tape, which dangles just short of the floor. There is an empty chair on each side of the table. The one on my side is fitted with three leather straps on each arm and on each leg and another thicker strap around the seat. It is bolted to the concrete floor. Behind my chair is another smaller table on which is mounted a green crank-by-hand movie projector. A film is reeled in and set to go.

“No me mires la cara, negrón, maricón,” one of the men says. I obey him. I lower my eyes. But I remember his face. Its skin is the color of wet sand. I remember his eyes. They are yellow, sprinkled with coffee dust. “Have you forgotten your place, negrón, maricón?”

I have not. I remember. I know exactly what to do. I have been in here too many Sundays. I give my back to the three men and bend down and rest my torso on the long wooden table. I feel four hands on my back, pressing down. I feel the field mouse bulge of one of the men brush against my right thigh. I try not to imagine who it belongs to. I hear him wet his finger in his mouth. He reaches into me and prods around with his wet finger, then he pushes his finger into me and leaves it in a moment and plucks it out. He grabs the thicker wire, the one I know is connected to the black lever on the four-note pianito. He wraps the shaved end of the thick wire around his finger and pushes into me again. When he pulls out I feel some of the silver filaments stay in and some spread out over the soft flesh around my anus. He rips a piece of the medical tape off the end of the long table and fixes the wire in place.

“Your asshole stinks, negrón, maricón.” He spanks me softly, like a reluctant parent disciplining a child.

Sunday is conscript education day.

My eyes are still closed. The four hands on my back ease their pressure and they lift me and throw me back into the seat with the straps. Before I am strapped in, my bare feet are hoisted up and a shallow steel pan half-full of water is slid under them. My feet are lowered into it. The water is cold. The straps are buckled. The field mouse bulge of the man who stuck his finger in me is brushing against my right shoulder. Then it is not. I hear two more pieces of tape ripped off the end of the table and the man's fingers (they are still moist) lift my sac and affix two thin cold plates underneath it on each side, making an “X” with two pieces of the medical tape, plates connected to wires connected to the red lever and to the yellow lever. Then he lifts my penis and lifts the head and pulls the skin back and rubs the head between index finger and thumb and he lets my penis drop. I hear him smell his fingers, sniffing deeply as if having walked into a kitchen where his abuelita is preparing arroz con pollo.

“You are still not washing like we showed you, negrón, maricón.”

He pulls the skin back again and affixes the last wire to the underside at the bottom of the head and wraps the longest piece of medical tape all the way around so that the skin remains pulled back. Then, with the loose ends of the tape, he affixes my penis up against my lower belly. He goes back to my right side and I feel the field mouse grazing me again. I try not to think about it. If my penis becomes aroused it will peel off my belly and want to stand on its own. I tell myself that I will not let this happen. But the pianito player is good, much better than the guards with the field mouse bulges. Aside from the magazines and the glossies and the films, he has at his command (depending on how far he presses down each lever and at what angle) the full range of chords of his instrument. He can please just as masterfully as he can hurt. He keeps a proper balance. He tickles. He stabs.

I hear the pianito player enter the room. I hear him sit down and slide his chair in. I hear him tap the thumb of his right hand on the table. I know the other four fingers are hovering over the four levers of the pianito, the index finger over the green, the middle finger over the red, the ring finger over the yellow, and the pinky over the black. He is waiting for me to open my eyes.

Sunday is conscript education day.

The pianito player is a simple-faced man with warm hazel eyes and a heavy peasant beard. He wears a sergeant's stripes, but his military jacket is three sizes too large on him and he is obviously not a military man. He wears also around his neck, dangling from a leather necklace, a cross whittled from the shell of a coconut. Because of this, because we have never known his name, because we only see him on certain Sundays and because he looks like a pastor, we call the pianito player Father. He approves of this.

“What is your name?” Father says when my eyes open. His voice is gentle. He remembers, but I must repeat it. We must have the same conversation every Sunday like a litany.

“Triste.”

“Triste. What a beautiful name. Who named you that?”

“My abuelita.”

“Triste, do you know the story of the angels of the Lord who came to stay at Lot's house?”

“Yes, I do.”

“What did the men of Sodom want at Lot's door?”

“The men at Lot's door wanted to fuck the angels of the Lord.”

“And what did Lot do?”

“He offered them his two virgin daughters instead.”

“And what did the men say?”

“The men said no. They wanted to fuck the angels of the Lord.”

“And what did the Lord do to the men of Sodom through the power of his beautiful angels?”

“The Lord struck the men of Sodom blind, struck them all blind, both great and small.”

“Triste, since your last visit, in either thought or act, have you been at Lot's door?”

With his left hand, Father has begun leafing through the magazines with the brown covers. I do not lie to Father. It is no use. He plays the pianito too well. I can feel the current before his fingers even touch the levers. I can taste blood on my lips when there is none there.

I tell Father the name of the one that I once loved that you once loved, the name that I now cannot remember, then Father knows that I have confessed my sins and my education may begin again.

The Name of the One That He Once Loved That She Once Loved

“Héctor.”

Monologue of Triste the Contortionist: At Lot's Door

Gracias. Gracias. The cafecito is good. Too much rum—you shouldn't have let me drink that much. I was tired. I dreamt of the white-sea tobacco fields after you told me his name. I dreamt before I was asleep, as I listened to the beautiful noise of the nightingales. You are fortunate after all. Fidel has banished you to a paradise. Thank you for telling me his name. Thank you for letting me dream of the white-sea tobacco fields again.

I dreamt of him as he had been that Christmas we were arrested, the day I dug into his chest with my long fingernails and pulled out the amethyst eye that had been his brother's eye, and in my dream other eyes danced out of his wound, varicolored like the set of marbles my abuelita had once given him when we stayed in her bohío on the edge of her brother's finca. My abuelita was always kind to him. Héctor was upset over his brother's disappearance. (We did not know then Juanito had been taken. We thought he had just upped and fled and Héctor took it hard, saying his brother had abandoned him, just as his maestro had.) Héctor swallowed all the marbles, twenty-six of them, one by one. That night I pressed my ear to his stomach and I could hear the marbles clinking against each other, as if children inside his belly were playing with them. It took ten days for him to pass them all. He hid at dusk out in my abuelita's brother's tobacco fields, under the cover of the cheesecloth that is like a giant mosquito netting that protects the leaves from hungry insects and from too much sun. The field is full of shadows when it is covered with the giant cheese cloth. It is a placid white sea. The phantoms of the blind men at Lot's door passed through the air and through the surface of the white sea. They danced around Héctor when he shit the marbles and Héctor's dark pinga stiffened and the skin lightened as it grew and he rubbed it against my bare back when he was finished, after he had wiped himself with the leaves lower down on the plant (because these were the driest). He rubbed against me under the cover of the white sea as I broke apart his warm lumps (that were sometimes soft and passed like mud through my hands and were sometimes hard and had to be pressed with both palms to crumble them) and I looked for the marbles that had passed, like a miner sifting for gems. It took him a week and half to pass all the marbles and every afternoon we would go out under the giant cheesecloth that is a white sea and strip and he would rub against me and ask me where I thought his brother had fled to and I would not answer and count the marbles that had passed and later I would wash them in the river. Like the phantoms of the blind men, we too could live under the surface of the white sea, but now and then we needed to come up for air.

Gracias. Gracias. I'm sorry I brought no clothes. But the swim was long. I feel like a ruined Roman emperor wearing all your blankets and bedsheets.

After I dug into his chest and pulled out the eye that was the amethyst eye and swallowed it so that the guards would not take it, Héctor fell into an unwakeable sleep, slept for two days in the military truck they kept us chained in, slept when they dragged him into the holding quarters in the abandoned hotel, and slept till they questioned us five days later. In the truck the wound bled till it entirely soaked his gray T-shirt but Héctor slept. His eyes were gyrating behind their closed lids and a light that was the color of his eyes was seeping out. I knew then he would make it. I knew what he was dreaming about. My chained hand was just able to reach him. (After I had dug out the amethyst eye a guard, who thought we had been fighting, came into the truck and beat us both in the ribs and in the stomach with the butt end of his rifle and tightened the chains around our chests and around our waists. I pleaded with him to get Héctor a doctor.
Que muera
, he grumbled,
los maricones merecen morir.
But Héctor did not die. Not yet.) His eyes were gyrating. I was just able to reach him. I undid his belt buckle and grabbed him and stroked him and tickled him underneath with my long fingernails like he liked till the light that was seeping out of his eyes flickered and my hand was wet with him. I tasted my hand and it was full of life. I thanked all the saints that my tongue had not been chained. The guard was wrong. Héctor did not die. Not yet.