Mona and Other Tales (11 page)

arrive again at the place I hate so much and nevertheless missed: my makeshift den. Everything seems resplendent. The dilapidated, peeling walls now seem to glisten; the sidewall of the next building looks like solid marble. I touch the improvised seats, the improvised stairs; the few crude furnishings around me all seem new, and I look at them and feel them, I would say, with something akin to love. Five years in that cavern, you remind me. Of course everything must seem wonderful to you. And you also recount all you had to suffer: investigations, persecution, and all the rest, but now we must forget it all and go on, you say. Now we must be under heavier surveillance. That's why, you say, it's best to forget about escape for a while. To pretend you have adapted, and not to tell anyone what you think. When you have to let off steam, talk only to me. Not a word to the others. All this happened to us for not being cautious enough. Yes, I say, though I had never spoken to anyone about the matter. But they are very shrewd, you say, more than you think. They might not have been able to develop the shoe industry or the food production or transportation, but when it comes to persecution, they are masters. Don't you forget it. . . . I'm not forgetting it, I'm not, how can I ever forget it . . . ? They are outside, some in uniform, others as civilians, all of them well armed, beating, abusing, murdering those hidden in trees, in the sewers, in the empty houses, those who are trying to get closer, to get in with us. And now the guards over there are putting the boxes with food (a hard-boiled egg, a bit of rice) at their feet, on the outside of the fence. They feel gratified seeing us inside. When one of us sticks out an arm to grab a box, the guard lifts his foot and steps on the hand, or quickly lands a spry kick in the chest. When somebody screams, the guards' laughter just gets louder, much louder than the screams. If they are more sadistic, or refined, they wait until one of us reaches a box and is trying to take it inside, to beat him until they break his arm. And their laughter is heard again. But you are not among those who, after being shoved and kicked, reach the fence, nor among those now withdrawing their stomped, empty hands. Perhaps you're up there, on the roof of that building, or inside, with the ambassador himself, taking care of those who are very ill, or the women who just had babies, or the elderly. Yes, surely I should have gone there first, because, that's it, you are with the sick, or undoubtedly sick yourself, seriously sick, and that's why I have not been able to find you. Otherwise you would have located me before I could find you. Going back, going back, to recede, to go back between shoves and kicks, and to return, to enter that building by whatever means, going back, going back. . . . I had arrived. Finally I had personally reached that point in which life not only makes no sense at all, but in which it's no longer a question whether it ever did. My tone may sound grandiloquent in the middle of this dilapidated room, but that doesn't make this fact less tragic. And I go on, because one cannot afford even to feel sad. Even sadness itself gets canceled out by the uproar, and by the constant invasion of cockroaches, by the sirens of the patrol cars, by the cries of, What shall I eat today? What shall I eat tomorrow? Yes, even sadness needs its space. At least a bit of quiet, a place where we can keep it, exhibit it, show it around. In hell one cannot feel sad. One simply lives (dies) day by day, I say, I said. And you answered: Write, write about it all, begin writing right now what you are suffering, and you will feel better. Actually, for quite a while I had been thinking about doing that, but what for? For you, for you yourself, for both of us, you say. And you're right. In a thorough, delirious, and angry manner, I am incessantly letting out all my horror, my fury, my resentment, my hatred, my failure, our failure, our helplessness, all the humiliation, the mockery, the swindles, and lastly, simply all the beatings and kickings, the endless persecution. All, all of it. All that terror goes onto the paper, the blank page, which, once filled, is carefully hidden in the double ceiling of the loft, or inside dictionaries, or behind a cabinet: it is my revenge, my revenge. My triumph.
Jail to bite, jail to shipwreck
and never be able to resurface; jail to give all up once and for all,
forgetting, not even imagining, that the sea ever existed, and, much
less, the possibility of crossing it
. . . . My triumph, my triumph, my revenge. Walking along streets that collapse into sewers that have burst and crumbled; going past buildings to be avoided because they might fall on you; past grim faces that summarily judge you and sentence you; past closed shops, closed movie houses, closed parks, closed cafeterias, some displaying signs, excuses, now covered with dust: CLOSED FOR RENOVATION, CLOSED FOR REPAIRS. What type of repairs? When will such renovation, such repairs, be completed? When, at least, will they start? Closed, closed, closed. Everything closed . . . I arrive, open the countless padlocks and run up the makeshift stairs. There she is, waiting for me. I find her, remove her canvas cover, and stare at her dusty and cold features. I wipe some dust away and caress her again. With my own hands I clean her back, her base, her sides. Desperately happy to be with her, I sit down, run my fingers over her keyboard, and, suddenly, it all starts up. With the tat-tat, tat-tat-tat, the music begins, haltingly, then faster, now at full tilt. Walls, cathedrals, trees and streets, beaches and faces, jail cells, tiny cells, huge cells; bare feet, pine stands, starry nights, clouds; a hundred, a thousand, a million parrots, low stools, a creeping vine; it all comes back, it all returns, they all attend. The walls recede, the roof vanishes, and quite naturally you float, float, uprooted, dragged off, uplifted; you are carried in arms, transported, immortalized, saved by that subtle, constant cadence, by that music, by that endless tat-tat-tat-tat-tat. . . . My revenge, my revenge. My triumph . . . Bodies armor-clad in excrement, children sinking in it, hands that search, stirring the shit. Hands and more hands, round, slender, flat, bony, palms up, palms down, joined, apart, making fists, closing; scratching hair, testicles, arms, backs; hands clapping, raising, dragging, hanging down in exhaustion; black, yellow, purple, white, translucent after days and days without food; inflamed, bruised, mutilated by beatings from trying to secure a ration box outside the fence where police cars, now with loudspeakers and on constant patrol, blare their thunder endlessly. “Anyone who wants to ask for the protection of the Cuban authorities can do so and return home.” And day and night, day and night, the shootings, the thirst, the threats, the hunger, the beatings. And now, unexpectedly, a rain shower is coming down in torrents, dissolving the cloud of dust, blurring the images of trees, cars, tents and military units, soldiers at their posts hiding behind parapets, all on the alert, all surrounding us. . . . A typical spring shower, sudden, torrential. Some people inside try to cover themselves with their hands; others, lowering their heads, seem to crouch as if they wanted to shrink, retract within themselves. For many who are asleep, the rain keeps running down their faces, their foreheads, their closed eyes, without waking them. Some who try to bend down, to seek protection under the others, cause an avalanche of protests, rebukes, and an occasional random kick. I take advantage of the confusion, the moment of calm that the unexpected shower has provoked in the stunned crowd, to make my way, scrutinizing the wet faces, the constricted and soaked bodies that occasionally suffer tremors and pulsations, and I continue, I continue inspecting them, watching them and trying to decipher their dripping faces, in my search for you. I know that here, not far from me, a step away perhaps, is where you are, where you must be. “They want to defeat us through starvation, sickness, terror. This shower is surely their doing, one of their tricks,” a woman declares, crazed under the deluge, while she makes crosses and strange signals in the air. . . . And I return, energized, my arguments replenished, my horror. I run up the sordid steps, open the countless padlocks. Fueled up, I climb to the improvised loft. My treasure, my treasure, I'm looking for my treasure, which I am going to expand right now; my vengeance, my triumph, which has been growing and it's no longer just a page, or ten, or even a hundred, but hundreds. Hundreds of pages robbed from sleep and rest, from horror and fear; wrested honestly from the asphyxiating heat, the clamor of the street, of the neighbors; won through a battle against mosquitoes, against perspiration, against the steamy, foul smells coming from upstairs, downstairs, everywhere. Thousands of pages won over the squeals of sinister children who seem to tacitly agree to interrupt in concert with their devilish brawls the moment I sit in front of my keyboard. Pages and more pages conquered out of punches, kicking, beating my head in fury against the wall, out of enraged blows in the struggle against television sets, record players, transistor radios, noisy motors, shouts, jumping about, and pots being scraped, unexpected visitors, unavoidable bodies and figures, incessant blackouts . . . Blows, blows, in the dark, fast, fast, faster and faster, blows, blows, before they come back, fast, fast, more blows: triumphal, victorious in the darkness . . . And again the uproar: beams, searchlights, flares now seem to burst everywhere, illuminating Fifth Avenue and the whole zone as if it were midday. Someone, a taxi driver with a Chevy, has managed to break the barriers, the cordons of guards, and has crashed at incredible speed into the ambassador's own car, which was parked at the entrance. The wounded man finally gets out of his demolished vehicle and begins to drag himself slowly toward the fence, where we watch him pulling at the grass to propel himself. Then the official government cars come forward and direct their headlights at him, while soldiers carrying flashlights surround him, joined by guards, other soldiers, judo experts, policemen from the three cordons around the embassy. They circle him but allow him to continue dragging himself. The driver is very close to the fence now, where everybody, myself included, keeps looking at him. Finally, when his hands are touching the wire fence, the circle of light closes up on him, the men advancing slowly, their guns aimed at him. Two of them bend down to lift him, gripping his belt and shirt, and carry him away. He looks at us and we see him opening and closing his mouth but saying nothing; nothing is heard, though all around, at this moment, there is total silence. . . . Nothing, nothing, there is nothing, not a page or fragment, nor even the latest, the unfinished one, left in the typewriter. I empty the drawers, turn over the mattress, the clothes in the closet, the improvised seats, I pull out the false ceiling, the covering on the improvised stairs; in consternation I examine and shake all the books. Nothing. From all the hundreds of scribbled pages, there is not a trace, not even a vestige of how they disappeared. . . . They, they, of course they did it, you tell me, while I, accepting my defeat, stop turning things over. No doubt they did it, you go on. Then they'll come back and arrest me, I say. Maybe so, maybe not, you tell me, just as worried as I am, though trying to pretend, trying without arguments to encourage me, to console me. Maybe they will not come, you say. Everything was in perfect order, nothing was disturbed. How on earth were they able to get in? Don't be naive, What is it that they can't do? They are the masters of the whole country, of all of us, they know every step you take, what we talk about, and maybe, even what we think. Don't you see? That is why they did it, so that you would know that they know. Don't you realize that what they want is precisely for you to become aware of that? For us to recognize that we are in their power, that there is no escape. That just as they took those papers and no one knew about it, not even you, they can also secretly dispatch you. You could be strangled or hanged somewhere, or you could appear to be a suicide, or to have died of natural causes—thrombosis, heart failure, whatever—and the door and the room, as well as everything else, will remain intact, in perfect order, in its place. And maybe a letter will materialize, composed and signed in your handwriting, as your farewell. . . . He stops talking. For a while both of us remain crouched over the pile of books in disorder. Now he takes a blank sheet of paper at random and brings it to his lips slowly, holding it between his teeth as if it were a blade of grass. Then you tell me, now in a whisper, I don't think they are coming to get you, to get us. This was only a demonstration, a refined showing-off. No more than a proof of their shrewdness, their power, their control . . . And now what are we going to do? I say. Play their game, go lower. Listen to this: play their game or perish. Let's go for a walk, you tell me now, softly. We'll fix all this mess together afterward. And we go out. . . . So at this point he was again where he had been many times before, in the same place, the same extreme, his hand on the makeshift stairs, his eyes contemplating the stark panorama, the four improvised seats, the bolted mirror (at that moment the closest blaring radio became intolerable), but he was still there, at that extreme point, on the edge, in the apparently incessant remembrance of a repetition, cautiously bending down, contemplating the vista that ends abruptly a few steps away: the dilapidated sidewall of the building next door and the old closed-off door leading to the hallway, where now someone, or a group of people, is uselessly calling out at full lung capacity for an elevator that never comes up. They shout and beat the door. What a pounding they are giving the old artifact, the cage, which of course does not respond. Elevator! Elevator! And the beating continues. And again, Elevator! The ruckus continues; it's all noise, but there are no signs of life. . . . So, thinking, commenting in a low voice, protesting, at times with irony but with great caution, they validated their existence only when out of the room, in a deserted spot along the Malecón, on an empty street or in a field, and even so, with both of them watching carefully on all sides. Because the question now, as his friend, his only friend, had told him, was not simply of having to suffer, but of having to praise out loud all the suffering, of having to vociferously support all the horrors, of not writing anything critical or borderline, but finding everything in favor, unconditionally, and leaving the pages carelessly on the improvised table, in a discreet but evident place, in case they came in. And in the afternoons, in a natural, normal voice, not too loud (the enemy is very skilled, very skilled, the other said), which could cause suspicion that they were pretending, the two would comment on the “benefits,” the “achievements,” the “noble endeavors” of the regime, its endless “progress.” They would also read