The Halfway House (New Directions Paperbook) (6 page)

The two women start to laugh.

“Put that thing away, you shameless fool,” Caridad says, “or I’m going to cut it off!”

The two women leave, discussing the nut’s member.

“It’s a spear,” Josefina says with admiration.

I walk out after them toward the dining room, where Arsenio is handing out breakfast. I drink a glass of cold milk quickly and go back to the TV room to watch my favorite preacher.

There’s a new crazy woman sitting in front of the set. She must be my age. Her body, while cheated by life, still has some curves. I sit next to her. I look around. There’s no one. Everyone is at breakfast. I reach my hand out to the
loca
and put it on her knee.

“Yes, my angel,” she says, without looking at me.

I raise my hand and get as far as her thighs. She lets me touch her without a complaint. I think the television preacher is talking about Corinthians now, about Paul, about the Thessalonians.

I raise my hand a little more and reach the crazy woman’s sex. I squeeze it.

“Yes, my angel,” she says without taking her eyes off the television.

“What’s your name?” I ask.

“Frances, my angel.”

“When did you get here?”

“Yesterday.”

I start stroking her sex with my nails.

“Yes, my angel,” she says. “Whatever you want, my angel.”

I realize that she’s trembling fearfully. I stop touching her. I feel pity for her. I take one of her hands and kiss it.

“Thank you, my angel,” she says absentmindedly.

Arsenio comes in. He’s done handing out breakfast and he comes to the TV with his usual can of beer. He drinks. He looks at the new crazy woman, amused.

“Mafia,” he then says to me. “What do you think of our new acquisition?”

He puts a bare foot on Frances’ knee. Then he puts the tip of his foot between the woman’s thighs, trying to drill into her sex.

“Yes, my angel,” says Frances, without taking her eyes off the television. “Whatever you want, my angels.”

She trembles. She’s trembling so much that it looks like the bones in her shoulders are going to come off. At that moment, the preacher is talking about a woman who had a vision of paradise.

“There were horses there … ,” he says. “Tame horses grazing on grass that was always delicate, always green …”

“Mafia!” Arsenio screams at the television preacher. “Even you are in the mafia!”

He takes another sip of beer and leaves.

Frances closes her eyes, still trembling. She leans her head on the back of the sofa. I look around and there’s no one. I get up from my chair and get on top of her gently. I put my hands around her neck and start squeezing.

“Yes, my angel,” she says with her eyes closed. I squeeze harder.

“Keep going, my angel.”

I squeeze harder. Her face becomes a deep shade of red. Her eyes tear up. But she remains that way, meek, uncomplaining.

“My angel … my angel … ,” she says in a small voice.

Then I stop squeezing. I take a deep breath. I look at her. I feel pity for her again. I take one of her emaciated hands and kiss it all over. Upon seeing her like that, so defenseless, I feel like hugging her and crying. She remains still, leaning her head on the back of her seat. With her eyes closed. Her mouth trembles. Her cheeks, too. I leave.

Mr. Curbelo has arrived and he talks to a friend on the phone.

When he talks on the phone, Mr. Curbelo sits back in his chair and puts his feet on his desk. He looks like a sultan.

“The competition was yesterday,” Mr. Curbelo tells his friend through the phone receiver. “I came in second place. This time I shot with a sling speargun. I got a fifty-pound jewfish!”

Just then, old one-eyed Reyes goes up to Curbelo and asks for a cigarette.

“Shoo, shoo!” Mr. Curbelo waves him away with his hand. “Can’t you see that I’m working?”

Reyes recoils toward the hallway. He hides behind a door. He looks all around with his one eye and, sure that no one can see him, takes his penis out and starts to urinate on the floor. That’s Reyes’ revenge. Urinating. And a storm of the most brutal beatings can come down on him, but he will always urinate in his room, in the living room and on the porch. People complain to Mr. Curbelo, but he won’t kick him out of the boarding home. Reyes, according to him, is a good customer. He doesn’t eat; he doesn’t ask for his thirty-eight dollars; he doesn’t demand clean towels or sheets. All he does is drink water, ask for cigarettes and urinate. I go to my room and throw myself on the bed. I think of Frances, the new little crazy woman whom I nearly suffocated a few minutes ago. I become angry with myself as I recall her defenseless face, her trembling body, her sad voice that never asked for forgiveness.

“Keep going, my angel, keep going …”

My feelings about her are a confusing mix of pity, hate, tenderness and cruelty.

Arsenio comes in the room and takes a seat in a chair next to my bed. He takes a can of beer out of his pocket and starts to drink.

“Mafia … ,” he says to me, looking over my head toward the street. “What’s life all about, mafia?”

I don’t answer. I sit up in bed and also look out the window. A homosexual dressed as a woman walks by. Then a black sports car goes by, with its radio at full blast. Scandalous rock music invades the street for a few seconds. Then it starts fading as the car gets farther away. Arsenio goes over to the dresser belonging to the crazy guy who works at the pizza place and starts to root through his things. He takes out a shirt and some dirty pants and throws them on the floor. He comes upon a drawer with a lock on it, but he takes a screwdriver out of his pocket and inserts it between the lock and the wood. He pulls hard. The screws give. Arsenio opens the drawer and searches anxiously among the nut’s papers, soaps and combs. Finally, he pulls a leather wallet out. He opens it and grabs a twenty-dollar bill. It’s the nut’s earnings from six days of work. He shows it to me. He smiles. He kisses it.

“Tonight we’re going to eat well,” he says. “Pizza, beer, cigarettes and coffee.”

I look at him, speechless.

“Mafia!” he yells at me with a smile. He takes a swig of beer and leaves the room.

I’m left alone. I don’t know what to do. I start looking out the window. A group of ten or twelve members of a religious order dressed immaculately in white go by. The homosexual dressed as a woman goes by again, this time on the arm of an enormous black man. And cars, cars, cars go by with their radios at full blast. I leave my room without any particular destination. Mr. Curbelo is still talking to his friend about yesterday’s competition.

“They gave me a plaque,” he says. “I hung it with the rest of them on the living room wall.”

The house smells of urine. I go and sit in front of the television set, next to Frances again. I take her hand. I kiss it. She looks at me with her trembling smile.

“You look like him,” she says.

“Who?”

“My little son’s father.”

I get up. I kiss her on the forehead. I hug her head tightly in my arms for a few minutes. Then, when my tenderness is exhausted, I look at her with irritation. Once again, I feel like harming her. I look around. There’s no one. I put my hands on her neck and start to squeeze slowly.

“Yes, my angel, yes,” she says, with a trembling smile.

I squeeze more. I squeeze hard, with all of my strength.

“Keep going, keep going…,” she says, in a small voice.

Then I let go. She has passed out and falls sideways in her seat. I take her face between my hands and start kissing her forehead madly. Little by little, she comes to. She looks at me. She smiles weakly. That’s enough for me.

I leave. I pass by Curbelo’s desk. He’s done talking on the phone already.

“William!” he calls out to me. I go over to him. He takes a bottle of pills out of a drawer and grabs two.

“Open your mouth,” he says.

I open it. He throws two pills inside: clack-clack.

“Swallow,” he says.

I swallow.

“Can I leave now?”

“Yes. Find Reyes for me and bring him over so he can have his pills too.”

I go to Reyes’ room. He’s lying down on a sheet soaked in urine. His room smells like a latrine.

“Listen, pig,” I say, punching him in the sternum. “Curbelo wants to see you.”

“Me? Me?”

“Yes, you, you filthy pig.”

“Okay.”

I leave holding my nose. I go to my room and throw myself on the bed. I look at the blue, peeling ceiling covered with small cockroaches. This is the end of me. I, William Figueras, who read all of Proust when I was fifteen years old, Joyce, Miller, Sartre, Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Albee, Ionesco, Beckett. I who lived twenty years within the revolution, as its victimizer, witness, victim. Great.

Just then, someone pops up in my bedroom window. It’s
El Negro
.

“Are you sleeping?”

“No, I’ll be right out.”

I button my shirt, smooth my hair with my fingers and go out to the garden.

“Hey,”
El Negro
says when he sees me. “If you were sleeping, keep sleeping!”

“No,” I say. “It’s okay.”

We sit down on some steps, at the foot of a closed door. There we shake hands effusively.

“How’s that life of yours in Miami?” I ask.

“Same old, same old,”
El Negro
says. “Oh!” he suddenly remembers. “Carlos Alfonso, the poet, went to Cuba. He was there for two weeks.”

“And what does he have to say? What does he have to say about Cuba?”

“He says everything’s the same. People are wearing jeans on the streets. Everyone in jeans!”

I burst out laughing.

“What else?”

“What else? Nothing,” El Negro says. “Everything’s the same. Everything is just as we left it five years ago. Except, perhaps, Havana is in ruins. But everything’s the same.”

Then
El Negro
looks me right in the eye and slaps my knee with his hand.

“Willy,” he says to me, “let’s leave here!”

“Where to?”

“To Madrid. To Spain. Let’s go see the Gothic neighborhood in Barcelona. Let’s go see El Greco in the Cathedral of Toledo!”

I start laughing.

“Someday we’ll go, yeah … ,” I say, laughing. “With only five thousand dollars,” says
El Negro.
“Five thousand dollars! We’ll retrace
allll
of Hemingway’s steps in
The Sun Also Rises
.”

“Someday we’ll go,” I say.

We’re silent for a few seconds. A nut comes over and asks us for a cigarette.
El Negro
gives it to him.

“I want to see where Brett … you remember Brett Ashley, don’t you? The heroine from
A Moveable Feast
.”

“Yes,” I say. “I remember.”

“I want to see where Brett ate; where Brett danced; where Brett screwed the bullfighter,”
El Negro
says, smiling at the horizon.

“You’ll see it,” I say, “Someday you’ll see it!”

“Let’s make our goal two years,”
El Negro
says. “In two years, we’ll go to Madrid.”

“Okay,” I say. “Two years. Okay.”

El Negro
looks me right in the eye again. He slaps me on the knee affectionately. I realize he’s about to leave. He gets up, takes a nearly full pack of Marlboros out of his pocket and gives it to me. Then he takes out two quarters and gives them to me, too.

“Write something, Willy,” he says.

“I’ll try,” I say.

He bursts out laughing. He turns on his heels. He gets farther away. When he gets to the corner, he turns around and yells something to me. It seems like part of a poem, but I only hear the words “dust,” “silhouettes,” “symmetry.” That’s all.

I go back inside the halfway house.

In my room, I throw myself back on the bed and fall asleep again. This time I dreamt that the Revolution was over, and that I was returning to Cuba with a group of old octogenarians. An old man with a long, white beard guided us, outfitted with a long staff. We stopped every three steps and the old man pointed out a bunch of ruins with his staff.

“This was the Sans Souci Cabaret,” the old man then said.

We walked on a little bit and then he would say again, “This was the Capitol building,” pointing at a field of weeds full of broken chairs.

“This was the Hilton Hotel,” and the old man pointed at a bunch of red bricks.

“This was the Paseo del Prado,” and now it was just a lion statue half-sunk into the ground.

So we walked through all of Havana like that. Vegetation covered everything, like in the bewitched city in Sleeping Beauty. Over everything reigned an air of silence and mystery akin to what Columbus must have found when he first landed on Cuban soil.

I woke up.

It had to be about one in the morning. I sit on the edge of the bed with an empty feeling in my chest. I look out the window. There are three homosexuals dressed as women on the corner, waiting for lonely men. Cars driven by these men without women prowl around the corner slowly. I rise from the bed, depressed. I don’t know what to do. The crazy guy who works at the pizza place is sleeping under a thick blanket, even though the heat is unbearable. He’s snoring. I decide to go out to the living room and sit in the old, tattered armchair. I go. As I pass by Arsenio’s room, I hear the voice of Hilda, the decrepit old hag, who is complaining because Arsenio is messing around with her behind.

“Keep still!” Arsenio says. I hear them struggle. I reach the armchair and sink heavily into it. Louie, the American, is sitting in a dark corner of the room.

“Leave me alone!” he says to the wall, his voice full of hate. “I’m going to destroy you! Leave me alone!”

I hear Hilda’s frantic voice coming from Arsenio’s room again.

“Not there,” she says. “Not there!”

Tato, the ex-boxer, comes out of the shadows wearing only a small pair of briefs. He sits in a chair in front of me and asks for a cigarette. I give it to him. He lights it with a cheap lighter.

“Listen to this story, Willy,” he says to me as he exhales a cloud of smoke. “Listen to this story, you’re gonna like it. Back there, in Havana, in the age of Jack Dempsey, there was a man who wanted to be the avenger of mankind. They called him ‘The God of the Starry Skies,’ ‘The King of the Underworld,’ ‘The Terrible Man.’”