The Halfway House (New Directions Paperbook) (2 page)

Very little is known about how an unknown author like Guillermo Rosales came to be the writer of excellence who appears here, the possessor of a unique style and the author of what is, without a doubt, one of the best Cuban books of the second half of the twentieth century, comparable only to the mythical Carlos Montenegro’s
Men Without Women
or Reinaldo Arenas’ famous memoir
Before Night Falls
(adapted for film by Julian Schnabel in 2001). Although Rosales practiced journalism in Cuba and always considered himself a writer, between the year of his arrival in Miami and the fateful morning of his suicide, there was very little in the public eye that stood out in terms of literature. While still in Cuba, Rosales had had a brush with fame or perhaps the hope of better luck for his work with
El juego de la Viola
, a novel which was a 1968 finalist in the prestigious “Casa de las Américas” contest. He did participate, along with the now internationally known Reinaldo Arenas, in one of the most interesting cultural project of the 1980s, the
Revista Mariel
(1983–1985). In it, Rosales published the only interview he gave while alive and in which, besides discussing his double exile—from Miami’s petit bourgeois and from revolutionary Cuba—he makes a very revealing clarification about his characters that confirms the reading I propose here and that places the condemnation of the ravages of totalitarianism as the central theme of this novel. His characters, Rosales says, “are Cubans affected by Castro’s totalitarianism, human wrecks.”

At some point in 1987 his friend, the writer Carlos Victoria, sent the manuscript for
The Halfway House
to the prestigious
Letras de Oro
(Golden Letters) contest, sponsored by American Express and with Octavio Paz, the Mexican future Nobel laureate, on the jury. Thanks to its obvious structural qualities and the cataclysmic power of the story, the book ended up winning. Nonetheless, nothing happened: the book had a luke- warm reception among Spanish-language critics and for years was known only by a few people.

In 2002, the French edition published by Actes Sud with the title
Mon Ange
(
My Angel
) was a resound- ing success. The newspaper
Le Monde
praised it as “a spectacular autobiographical fable” as well as a “lyrical and lapidary” novel. The following year, it was reissued in Spain under the title
La Casa de los Náufragos
(
The House of the Shipwrecked
) to great acclaim.

In 1993, the time of his death, Guillermo Rosales was forty-seven years old.

THE HALFWAY HOUSE

The house said “boarding home” on the outside, but I knew that it would be my tomb. It was one of those marginal refuges where the desperate and hopeless go—crazy ones for the most part, with a smattering of old people abandoned by their families to die of loneliness so they won’t screw up life for the winners.

“You’ll be fine here,” my aunt says, seated at the wheel of her straight-off-the-assembly-line Chevrolet. “You’ll understand that nothing more can be done.”

I understand. I’m almost grateful that she found me this hovel to live in so that I don’t need to sleep on benches and in parks, covered in grime and dragging sacks of clothes around.

“Nothing more can be done.”

I understand her. I’ve been admitted to more than three psychiatric wards since I’ve been here, in the city of Miami, where I arrived six months ago, fleeing the culture, music, literature, television, sporting events, history and philosophy of the island of Cuba. I’m not a political exile. I’m a complete exile. Sometimes I think that if I had been born in Brazil, Spain, Venezuela or Scandinavia, I would have also fled those streets, ports and meadows.

“You’ll be fine here,” my aunt says.

I look at her. She gives me a long, hard look. There’s no pity in her dry eyes. We get out of the car. The house said “Boarding Home.” It’s one of those halfway houses that pick up the dregs of society. Beings with empty eyes, dry cheeks, toothless mouths, filthy bodies. I think such places exist only here, in the United States. They’re also known simply as homes. They’re not government-run. They’re private houses that anyone can open as long as he gets a license from the state and completes a paramedic course.

“…a business just like any other,” my aunt explains to me. “A business like a funeral home, an optician’s, a clothing store. You’ll pay three hundred dollars here.”

We opened the door. There they all were: René and Pepe, the two mentally retarded men; Hilda, the decrepit old hag who constantly wets herself; Pino, a gray, silent man who just glares at the horizon with a hard expression; Reyes, an old one-eyed man whose glass eye constantly oozes yellow liquid; Ida, the grande dame come to ruin; Louie, a strong American with greenish-yellow skin who constantly howls like a mad wolf; Pedro, an old Indian, perhaps Peruvian, silent witness to the world’s evils; Tato, the homosexual; Napoleon, the midget; and Castaño, a ninety-year-old geezer who can only shout “I want to die! I want to die! I want to die!”

“You’ll be fine here,” my aunt says. “You’ll be among Latinos.”

We go on. Mr. Curbelo, the owner of the Home, is waiting for us at his desk. Did I find him repulsive from the very beginning? I don’t know. He was fat and shapeless, and was wearing a ridiculous track suit made all the worse by a juvenile baseball cap.

“Is this the man?” He asks my aunt with a smile on his face.

“This is him,” she responds.

“He’ll be fine here,” Curbelo says, “like he’s living with family.”

He looks at the book I’m carrying under my arm and asks, “Do you like to read?”

My aunt responds, “Not only that. He’s a writer.”

“Ah!” Curbelo says with mock surprise. “And what do you write?”

“Bullshit,” I say softly.

Then Curbelo asks, “Did you bring his medicines?”

My aunt looks in her purse.

“Yes,” she says. “Melleril. One hundred milligrams. He has to take four a day.”

“Good.” Mr. Curbelo says with a satisfied face. “You can leave him then. We’ll take care of everything else.”

My aunt turns to look into my eyes. This time, I think I see the slightest trace of pity.

“You’ll be fine here,” she assures me. “Nothing more can be done.”

My name is William Figueras, and by the age of fifteen I had read the great Proust, Hesse, Joyce, Miller, Mann. They were for me what saints are to a devout Christian. Twenty years ago, I finished writing a novel in Cuba that told a love story. It was the story of an affair between a communist and a member of the bourgeoisie, and ended with both of them committing suicide. The novel was never published and my love story was never known by the public at large. The government’s literary specialists said my novel was morose, pornographic, and also irreverent, because it dealt harshly with the Communist Party. After that, I went crazy. I began to see devils on the walls, to hear voices that insulted me—and I stopped writing. All I produced was a rabid dog’s froth. One day, thinking that a change of country would save me from madness, I left Cuba and arrived in this great American country. There were some relatives waiting for me here who didn’t know anything about my life and who, after twenty years of separation, barely knew me anymore. They thought a future winner was coming, a future businessman, a future playboy, a future family man who would have a future house full of kids, and who would go to the beach on weekends and drive fine cars and wear brand-name clothing like
Jean Marc
and
Pierre Cardin
. The person who turned up at the airport the day of my arrival was instead a crazy, nearly toothless, skinny, frightened guy who had to be admitted to a psychiatric ward that very day because he eyed everyone in the family with suspicion and, instead of hugging and kissing them, insulted them. I know it was a great disappointment for everyone, especially for my aunt who was expecting something great. They got me instead. An embarrassment. A terrible mark on this fine Cuban petit bourgeois family with their healthy teeth and buffed fingernails, radiant skin, fashionable clothes, who were weighed down by thick gold chains and owned magnificent cars of the latest make and spacious houses with well-stocked pantries and central heat and air-conditioning. That day (the one on which I arrived), I know that they all eyed each other with embarrassment, made some scathing comments and drove off from the airport without any intention of ever seeing me again. And that’s the way it’s been. The only one who remained faithful to the family ties was this Aunt Clotilde, who decided to make herself responsible for me and kept me at her house for three months, until the day when, at the advice of other friends and relatives, she decided to stick me in the halfway house: the house of human garbage.

“Because you’ll understand that nothing more can be done.”

I understand her.

This halfway house was, originally, a six-room house. Perhaps it was once inhabited by one of those typical American families who fled Miami when the Cubans fleeing communism began to arrive. Now the halfway house has twelve tiny rooms, with two beds in each room. In addition, it has an ancient television set that’s always broken, and a kind of living room with twenty folding chairs that are falling apart. There are three bathrooms, but one of these (the best one) is reserved for the boss, Mr. Curbelo. The toilets in the other two are always clogged since some of the residents stick in them old shirts, sheets, curtains and other cloth materials that they use to wipe their behinds. Mr. Curbelo does not give us toilet paper, although he is supposed to by law. There is a dining room, outside the house, tended by a Cuban
mulata
with scores of religious necklaces and bracelets whose name is Caridad. But she doesn’t cook. If she were to cook, Mr. Curbelo would have to pay her an additional thirty dollars per week, and that’s something Mr. Curbelo would never do. So Mr. Curbelo himself, with his bourgeois little face, is the one who makes the stew every day. He makes it in the simplest way, by taking a handful of peas or lentils and dropping them (plop!) in a pressure cooker. Maybe he adds a little garlic powder. The rest, rice and a main dish, comes from a home delivery service called “Sazón,” whose owners, knowing they’re dealing with a nut house, pick the worst they have and send it over any which way in two huge greasy pots. They should send enough food to feed twenty-three people, but they only send enough for eleven. Mr. Curbelo thinks this is enough and no one complains. But if a complaint does arise, then Mr. Curbelo, without even looking at the person, says, “You don’t like it? Well if you don’t like it, leave!” But … who’s going to leave? Life on the streets is hard. Even for crazy people whose brains are on the moon. And Mr. Curbelo knows this and repeats, “Leave, quickly!” But nobody leaves. The complainer lowers his eyes, grabs his spoon and goes back to swallowing his raw lentils silently.

Because in the halfway house, no one has anyone. Old Ida has two kids in Massachusetts who want nothing to do with her. Quiet Pino is all alone and doesn’t have anyone at all in this huge country. René and Pepe, the two mentally retarded guys, could never live with their weary relatives. Old one-eyed Reyes has a daughter in Newport that he hasn’t seen in fifteen years. Hilda, the old lady with cystitis, doesn’t even know her own last name. I have an aunt … but “nothing more can be done.” Mr. Curbelo knows all of this. He knows it well. That’s why he is so sure that no one will leave the halfway house and that he will continue to receive the checks for $314 that the American government sends for each one of the crazy people in his hospice. There are twenty-three nuts: $7,222. Plus, with another $3,000 that comes from I don’t know what supplemental source, it comes to $10,222 a month. That’s why Mr. Curbelo has a well-appointed house in Coral Gables and a farm with racehorses. That’s why he spends his weekends perfecting the fine art of deep-sea fishing. That’s why his kids’ photos appear in the local paper on their birthdays, and he goes to society parties wearing tails and a bow tie. Now that my aunt is gone, his face, once warm, eyes me with cold indifference.

“Come along,” he says dryly. He takes me down a narrow hallway to a room, number four, where another crazy guy is sleeping with a snore that reminds me of an electric saw.

“This is your bed,” he says, without looking at me. “This is your towel,” and he points at a threadbare towel full of yellowish stains. “This is your closet, and this is your soap,” and he takes half a piece of white soap from his pocket and hands it to me. He doesn’t say another word. He looks at his watch, realizes how late it is and leaves the room, closing the door behind him. Then I put my suitcase on the floor, place my small television set on top of the armoire, open the window wide and sit on the bed assigned to me with the book of English poets in my hands. I open it at random, to a poem by Coleridge:

God save thee, ancient mariner!
From the fiends that plague thee thus!—
“Why look’st thou so?” —With my cross bow
I shot the Albatross.

The door to the room suddenly opens and a robust figure, with skin as dirty as puddle water, comes in. He has a can of beer in his hand and takes several sips from it while giving me the once-over out of the corner of his eye.

“You’re the new guy?” he asks after a while. “Yes.”

“I’m Arsenio, the guy who takes care of things when Curbelo leaves.”

“Okay.”

He looks at my suitcase, my books and stops at my small black-and-white TV set.

“Does it work?”

“Yes.”

“How much did it cost you?"

“Sixty dollars.”

He takes another swig, without taking the corner of his eye off of my TV set. Then he says, “Are you going to eat?”

“Yes.”

“Then get going. The food’s ready.”

He turns around and leaves the room, still drinking from his can. I’m not hungry, but I should eat. I only weigh 115 pounds, and I tend to get woozy. People on the street sometimes yell “
Worm!
” at me. I throw the book of English poets on the bed and button up my shirt. My pants swim around my waist. I should eat.

I head toward the dining room.

Miss Caridad, the one in charge of distributing food to the crazy people, points out the only open spot to me. It’s a seat next to old one-eyed Reyes, and across from Hilda, the decrepit old hag whose clothes reek of urine, and Pepe, the older of the two mentally retarded men. They call this table “the untouchables’ table,” since no one wants to be with them when it’s time to eat. Reyes eats with his hands, and his enormous glass eye, as big as a shark’s eye, constantly oozes watery pus that falls down to his chin like a large yellow tear. Hilda also eats with her hands and does so reclined in her chair, like a marchioness eating delicacies, so that half of the food ends up on her clothes. Pepe, the retarded guy, eats with an enormous spoon that looks like a spade. He chews slowly and loudly with his toothless jaw, and his whole face, up to his large popping eyes, is full of peas and rice. I bring the first spoonful to my mouth and chew slowly. I chew once, three times, and then I realize that I can’t swallow it. I spit everything out onto my plate and leave. When I get to my room, I notice that my TV set is missing. I look for it in my closet and under the bed, but it’s not there. I go in search of Mr. Curbelo, but the person sitting at his desk now is Arsenio, the second in command. He takes a swig from his can of beer and informs me,

“Curbelo’s not here. What’s up?”

“My TV set has been stolen.”

“Tsk, tsk, tsk,” he moves his head in despair. “That was Louie,” he then says. “He’s the thief.”

“Where’s Louie?”

“In room number three.”

I go to room number three and find Louie the American, who howls like a wolf when he sees me come in.

“TV?” I say.

“Go to hell!” He exclaims, furious. He howls again. He throws himself at me and pushes me out of the room. Then he shuts the door with a loud slam.

I look at Arsenio. He smiles. But he hides it quickly, covering his face with the beer can.

“A sip?” he asks, holding the can out to me.

“No thanks, I don’t drink. When will Mr. Curbelo be in?”

“Tomorrow.”

Great. Nothing more can be done. I go back to my room and let myself fall heavily on the bed. The pillow stinks of old sweat. The sweat of other nuts who have been through here and shriveled up between these four walls. I throw it far away from me. Tomorrow I’ll ask for a clean sheet, a new pillow and a lock to put on the door so that no one enters without asking first. I look at the ceiling. It’s a blue ceiling, peeling, overrun with tiny brown cockroaches. Great. This is the end of me, the lowest I could go. There’s nothing else after this halfway house. Just the street and nothing more. The door opens again. It’s Hilda, the decrepit old hag who urinates on her clothes. She has come in search of a cigarette. I give it to her. She looks at me with kind-hearted eyes. I notice a certain beauty of yesteryear behind that revolting face. She has an incredibly sweet voice. With it, she tells me her story. She has never married, she says. She’s a virgin. She is, she says, eighteen years old. She’s looking for a proper gentleman to marry. But a gentleman! Not just anyone.