Havana Red (6 page)

“Secondly, camouflage, for nothing guarantees that the cosmetic (or surgical) conversion of man into woman doesn't have, as its hidden final goal, a kind of disappearance, of invisibility, of
effacement
and erasure of the macho himself from the aggressive tribe, from the brutal macho horde. And finally,” Muscles continued, “comes intimidation, for the frequent disarray
or excessive make-up, the visibility of the artifice, the variegated mask, paralyse or terrify, as happens with certain animals who use their appearance to defend themselves or hunt, or to compensate for natural defects or virtues they don't have: courage or cunning, right?”

The Other – always so vulgar, “camouflaged” behind a culture he didn't possess, sonorously sucking the goat cutlets he was devouring – Muscles was paying – looked out of the window, as if he were searching for something.

“But, at the end of the day,” he asked, “are they queens or aren't they?”

The truth is I never discovered why Muscles insisted on bringing him with us on our sentimental, culinary tours of Paris. Because the Other Boy – as everybody knows – only wants queens, and the more publiclavatory and over-the-top the better. And if Muscles needed someone to cross swords with, there were thousands in Paris, and he had five-star choices, so beautiful and sweet . . .

“Cubanly speaking I would say, ‘Yes, they are queens,' ” Muscles finally declared, a man who also had his off-the-rails longing for queens. “Like you,” and he smiled, pointing at the Other, “but more daring, you know? And while we're about it, do you want to go tomorrow, Saturday, to a cabaret where some transves
tites
will perform?”

I was so struck by the invitation that I furiously downed the contents of one of those amphoras, something I'd never done and will never do again as long as I live. But everything was possible in Paris: even drinking without getting drunk . . . We walked home through the city, and it was that night, in Muscles' studio, that I began to etch some lines on cardboard,
and by dawn I'd designed the red dress my Electra Garrigó would wear in that luminous, tragically aborted performance which showed Virgilio Piñera his work was more inspired than he could ever warrant.

 

The Count thought: this pansy and a half is getting on my wick, just as he realized he couldn't repress his desire to urinate. This story of Parisian transvestites the Marquess (as his coteries entitled him) had narrated, searching for the red dress of his dear little friend who'd been murdered, was too much like a fable rehearsed and staged to snare the unwary, catch them in a spider's web and swallow them, perhaps intellectually, maybe physically when, for example, they said they needed to urinate. He crossed his legs and it got worse: the pressure grew on a bladder overwhelmed by liquids he'd ingested to mitigate the heat and he realized he had two options in this emergency: to withdraw or to ask the dramatist if he could use his lavatory. The first solution was as hopeless as the second, for he didn't want to establish any kind of relationship with that character, but nor could he abandon him now, when he presented himself as the best way into the more scabrous mysteries in the double life of Alexis Arayán. The Marquess, fallen on hard times, was his main witness, perhaps even the murderer of the masked man, although, he thought, while he felt he was about to urinate and reviewed yet again his host's physical disposition, how could such premature baby arms have strangled anyone? But the Count had always thought urinating in a stranger's house was the first step to a revealing intimacy: seeing what's in a bathroom is like seeing into people's souls: dirty pants, an unflushed toilet or perfumed
bath gel are usually as revealing as a confession to a priest.

“I need to go to the bathroom,” he said, without first instructing his brain.

He supposed the Marquess would smile and he did, and he glanced down at the Count in a way that made him feel his privates had been weighed, measured and fondled.

“Just through there, third door on the left. Oh, and to flush you must hold the handle down till the water swills out all your emanations, get me?”

“Thanks,” replied the Count, standing up and accepting that his bladder had let him down badly. He made for the dark passage and walked through two rooms: as he was in the Marquess's line of vision, he hardly looked to one side or the other, but he saw one was a bedroom and the second a study, with books piled high to a remote ceiling. Then he discovered the origin of the odour he hadn't been able to identify initially: it was the oppressive, alluring scent of old, damp, dusty paper that came from that equally dark precinct, where was to be found what must be Alberto Marqués's library, surely inhabited by authors and works banned by certain codes and exotic publishing wonders, unimaginable to the ordinary reader, that the Count tried to conjure up using residues of intellect not preoccupied by doubt as to whether or not he'd reach the lavatory in time.

He opened the door and looked at the bathroom: unlike the rest of the house, it seemed clean and organized, but he didn't stop to scrutinize. He stood in front of the bowl, brought his desperate penis into the light of day and began urinating, feeling the whole world was relieved by the jet hitting the glaze. And it ran on and on as he looked towards the door and
thought he saw a shadow through the panes of murky glass which had been badly patched up. Could he be looking at him? The Count put his hand over his penis and stopped urinating as he peered at the door. This is all I needed, he thought, as he shook himself, and welcomed the incontrollable shiver that accompanied the end of micturition. He rapidly popped his diminished extremity into his trousers and flushed the toilet, following the instructions given. Goodbye, effluvia.

When he went into the corridor he saw the Marquess in the sitting room, seated in his armchair. He walked over to him and sat down again.

“How lovely to urinate when you feel like it, don't you agree?” commented the dramatist, and the Count was certain he'd been observed. Fuck your mother, he said to himself, this is too much, but he tried to get back on to the offensive.

“And what has all this Paris story got to do with Alexis Arayán?”

The Marquess smiled, then tittered.

“Forgive me,” he said. “Well, it has to do with the dress they found him in and the fact he wasn't a transvestite. Rather he wasn't what you'd call practising, although he sometimes played at it. He donned disguises and created various personae. As much feminine as masculine, though he'd never have been capable of going on stage, you understand? He was too shy and cerebral for that and very inhibited, do you see? . . . But he always liked that dress, the one I designed on that night in Paris for my version of
Electra Garrigó
to be premièred in the Théâtre des Nations in Paris in 1971. And although Alexis was homosexual, as you must have gathered, I never imagined he'd have the daring necessary to be a transvestite and, as far as I know, he never did go into the street dressed as a woman.”

“So why did he do so yesterday?”

“I don't know, you should find out . . . That is what you're paid for, aren't you?”

“Apparently,” replied the Count. “By the way, was Alexis Catholic?”

“Yes, of course. And half mystic.”

“And did he ever mention the day of the Transfiguration?”

“Of the transfiguration? What transfiguration?”

“Christ's . . . the one celebrated yesterday, on August sixth.”

“No, he didn't mention that . . . You know, he left yesterday without saying goodbye, but I wasn't too worried, because he was like that: half neurotic, and sometimes very introverted. I heard him go out into the passage, and that's why I know it was around seven. . . . Besides, for your information: Alexis and I were just friends. He had problems at home, his parents were threatening to kick him out every day, so he asked me to let him live here. But that was all there was to it, right? Every sheep has her mate and I'm too old to wolf it . . .”

The Count lit up another cigarette and again wondered: what the fuck have I got into? This world was too remote and exotic for him and he felt totally bewildered, with a thousand questions the answers to which he had no access to. For example: did that old queer like queers or men? And is a man who goes with queers also queer? Can two queers be friends, even live together without having it off with each other? But he said: “Of course, I understand . . . And how did you and Alexis get to know each other? When did it happen?”

The Marquess smiled again and patted his dressinggown lapels.

“You really don't know? . . . You know, eighteen years ago, the year of Our Lord 1971, I was parameterized, and, naturally, didn't possess the parameters they were after. Can you imagine – parameterizing an artist as if he were a pedigree dog? It would be almost comic if it weren't tragic. And, on the other hand, it's such an ugly word . . . To parameterize. Well, that whole business of parameterizing artists began and they expelled me from the theatre group and association of theatrical artistes, and after finding out I couldn't work in a factory, as I should have done if I wanted to purify myself by contact with the working class, though nobody ever asked me if I wanted to be pure or the working class whether it was ready to accept such a detox challenge, they put me to work in a tiny library in Marianao, cataloguing books. I'll confess something to you for which I hope you won't put me inside, lieutenant sir: it was a mistake. You can't put an artist too near fine books he doesn't own, because he'll steal them . . . Though he doesn't have the soul of a thief, he'll steal them . . . Just imagine: that library had an edition of
Paradise Lost
illustrated by Doré. You know the one I mean? Well, I can show you, if you like . . .”

“That won't be necessary,” interjected the Count.

“Well, I was working there and Alexis went to study in the library, as it was near the school where he was enrolled. And the fact is he knew who I was and obviously admired me. The poor kid, he didn't dare speak to me, because he'd heard so many things about me . . . but you'll be familiar with all that, I guess? Until one day he dared, and confessed he'd read two of my works and that he'd been present at a rehearsal of
Electra Garrigó
, and it had been the deepest emotional experience of his life . . . The poor child adored me,
and no artist can resist the adoration of a young apprentice. So, we became friends.”

“Just one last question for now,” said the Count, looking at his watch. That last story seemed the most extraordinary of all he'd heard and read, and he tried to imagine what a man so acclaimed and loved by the critics could have felt in the anonymous silence of a municipal library, where his expectations were reduced to the theft of the odd desirable book. No, it wasn't so easy. “Did Alexis have problems with anyone?”

Alberto Marqués didn't smile or blink this time. He merely shifted the very long fingers which he'd draped over the end of the chair arm.

“I'm not sure if he had what people call problems. He was a sensitive soul, to put it one way. He craved peace and affection and at home they treated him like a leper, were ashamed of him, and that turned him into someone obsessed, who saw ghosts on every street corner. Besides, he knew he'd never become an artist, which had been his lifelong dream, but he courageously recognized his lack of talent, something not everyone's capable of doing, right?”

The Count thought: right. And wondered: could that be a dart aimed at me? No, no way, he doesn't know me and I am really talented. A real fucking talent.

“The people at the Centre for Cultural Heritage loved him, especially the artists, because he always defended them against the filthy sniffing bureaucrats leeching on talent. And I think he really enjoyed a fairly stable relationship with a painter, one Salvador K., whom I don't know personally. Will that do for now? Do you want to go to the bathroom again?” And now he did manage a smile.

The Count stood up: he'd met an awesome verbal adversary, he thought, and stretched out a hand to
receive the emaciated, poorly articulated bones of the famous Alberto Marqués. It was a frog's hand.

“I don't want to go to the bathroom, but I'm not done. Besides, you owe me the end of the transvestite story.”

“True, my prince,” said the Marquess, unable to restrain himself, and added: “Forgive me, but I've got a real thing about titles of nobility, you know? Well whenever you fancy, Sir Policeman Count, but wait a minute: to force you to come back I'm going to lend you the book Muscles wrote on transvestites. It's dedicated to me, you know? . . . You'll see what madness human beings are capable of.” And he smiled, rising up to a string of uncontrollable grunts and blinks.

The Count looked at the book's front cover: a butterfly was emerging from a chrysalis with a grotesquely divided human face: a woman's eyes and a man's mouth, female hair and male chin. It was entitled
The Face and the Mask
; and was quite uncryptically dedicated to “The last active member of the Cuban nobility”. He felt an urge to return home and start reading this book, which might perhaps supply a few keys to what had happened or, at least, teach him something about the dark world of homosexuality. In his mystic dissertation the Marquess had mentioned three possible attitudes among the changelings: metamorphosis as a way to overcome the model, camouflage as a form of disappearance, and disguise as a means of intimidation. Which could have pushed Alexis Arayán into dressing up like Electra Garrigó the very night of the day of the Transfiguration? He was coming round to liking that story, but if he wanted to understand anything he had to know a little more. At least one thing was definite: Alberto Marqués couldn't be the physical murderer of Alexis Arayán. It would
have taken those arms two hours to strangle the youth, while he held his nose between two fingers. But he was also sure Alberto Marqués was deeply implicated in that death dressed in red.