Chango's Beads and Two-Tone Shoes (3 page)

Cooney sang enthusiastically and with bounce:

“Sliding down your cellar door,
What a thrill I had in store,
Sliding down into the grass,
Twenty slivers in my ass.
Thinking of those days gone by
Brings a teardrop to my eye,
Wond’ring if I’ll ever see
Cellar door that beckons me.
Beckons me forever more,
Slivers from your dear old door.”

Quinn watched Renata, who did not smile at the lyrics. She sees dementia in the man, he decided. Max was amused.

Hemingway leaned over to Quinn and whispered, “You’re right about gooney-Cooney. We’re going to put him away.”

“How so?”

“We’ll have him sing it again and at the finish I’ll throw him a right and cross with a left.”

“You’re a harsh critic,” Quinn said. “Maybe we should just temper our applause.”

Hemingway smiled and spoke to Cooney. “You write lyrics like a poet, like T. S. Eliot. But do it once more with emphasis. It needs emphasis.”

Cooney sang it again and on “
Slivers from your dear old door
” he took off his hat, raised both arms upward in an embrace of public lyricism, and finished on an emphatic note that turned all heads in the bar. Hemingway hit him according to plan, a right and then a looping left, launching him backward until his head hit the wall near the door, and he slid to the floor. As Hemingway was throwing the left Max saw it rising, ducked sideways, and lost his balance.

“Jesus, Ernest,” Max said, “what was that?”

“Sorry, Max,” Hemingway said, helping him to his feet. “Didn’t have you in mind. That’s two knockdowns with one left.”

Renata’s face registered confusion.
“¿Qué es esto? ¿Estás bien?”
she said to Max, and took his arm.

“Bien, bien,”
Max said, brushing dust off his coat and trousers. “He never laid a glove on me.”

Renata stared at Hemingway. “So brutal,” she said.
“¿Serás estúpido?”
and she left at a brisk pace. Max followed her.

Joe Cooney had not moved. His head was cocked against the wall. His two friends went to him and eased him down to lie flat, and a waiter put a towel under his head to blot his blood.

“Get that man to the
casa de socorros
,” Hemingway said to the bartender. “
Está herido.
And bring me a filet mignon.”

“¿Crudo?”
asked the bartender.

“Raw.”

The waiter went to the street to hail a passing car that would take Cooney to a first aid center. Cooney’s friends were standing over him, staring at Hemingway.

The bartender put a white plate with a raw steak in front of Hemingway, who wrapped it around his right hand. He lifted up the steak and showed his bleeding knuckles to Quinn.

“See this? I’ve been out fishing, and the skin is dry from the salt and the sun.
Otro doble
,” he said to the bartender.

“I thought you were joking,” Quinn said to Hemingway.

“Jerks are no joke,” he said. “Jerks should not be given houseroom. He said he was a writer. What kind of a jerk says that to a writer and he doesn’t even know who he’s talking to? Jerks and fools are a form of death when they turn up in your face. Singing that song in public is like writing a suicide note. I spent my life looking death in the eye and fighting it.” He paused. “I didn’t tell you what I was writing, did I?”

“No, you didn’t,” Quinn said.

“It’s not a suicide note. I’m reinventing my past in Paris, and I’m coming back with my trilogy,” and he emptied his new double daiquiri with one uptip of the glass. “The land, the sea and the air, and most of it’s been written for years. But there’s a future to think about, and if I put it out all at once we could die of taxation from publication. They’ll get it in time and it’ll knock them all on their ass. You’ll be very proud of me, Mr. Quinn.”

“Didn’t you do the sea in the
Old Man
?”

“Only part of it. I did that for a woman. There’s more to come, kid. Let’s have two more
dobles
here.
Dos más
.”

When Quinn began publishing his own novels in later years he looked at the notes he had made about Hemingway and about himself after this improbable night, and he understood there were important things he had left out, just as Hemingway had left things out when they talked. But as Hemingway had said, you can’t leave out what you don’t know, and in these years he had three novels in progress and could not stop writing them, or make them come together with meaning the way he could in the old days; because now everything had unendingly equal meaning, equal value. And he had left that out when he talked about it. Yet one must persevere. One must defy the forces that try to kill the spirit. One must not only persevere, one must prevail. And so Hemingway kept writing about what it was that was trying to ruin him, and the work became a love song to that. His one-two punches were part of it, just as Joe Cooney’s cellar door was the Cooney love song to his own lack of talent. Witness my absent gift. See how well I apply it.

Failure can also be a creative act, Quinn decided. One must look straight ahead as one makes the forced march backward into used history. The death of ambition, gentlemen, is a great impetus for grasping this, and soon you will thrill to how urgently you are moving, how truly exciting this quest for failure can be. What you do not know at this point is that your quest for failure may also fail.

The waiter came in from the street and said he had found a car to take Cooney. One of the friends pointed to Hemingway as he talked to the waiter, and the waiter nodded. A brawny young black man came in and Hemingway introduced him to Quinn as his driver, Juan. Juan was alert to hostile possibility and stood by Hemingway, monitoring the crowd. Cooney was conscious and talking with his friends, who helped him stand, then walked him to the street.

The crowd in the restaurant stopped watching Hemingway and the tableau he had created, and went back to drinking. A trio of black street singers with guitars came into the bar but a waiter said they weren’t welcome. One of them said they knew Hemingway was here and had written a song for him, “Soy Como Soy” (I am what I am), about a whore who can’t be the woman Hemingway wants her to be. The waiter asked Hemingway if he wanted to hear the song and he said he did. Quinn listened and drank his daiquiri. When the singers finished, Quinn asked them, “
Conoce la canción,
‘Sliding Down My Cellar Door’?”

“No, señor,”
one singer said.

“Just as well,” Quinn said. “It’s a very sad song.”

Hemingway gave the trio a five-dollar bill.

El Palacio de Bellas Artes was in old Havana, across Parque Zayas from the Presidential Palace, and at late morning Quinn asked for Renata at the information desk. They directed him to a second-floor gallery where he found her with forty high school children, explaining a new exhibit to them—a triptych of paintings inspired by one of the myths of Santeria, the religious cult of the African slaves the Spaniards had brought to Cuba. Quinn only partly understood Renata’s rapid Spanish, but the paintings impressed him, and in days to come he would learn about the long-haired woman and the warrior who were their focus. The woman was Obba, and in the first painting her face was obscured by a white mask with only eyeholes. In the second painting her hair and a scarf covered the left side of her head, because, Renata explained, Obba had cut off her ear to make a meal for her husband—Changó, the warrior king of kings. When Changó realized what Obba had done he rejected her, for he could not live with a mutilated woman. Obba cried for so long and so hard at losing him that her tears created a river, which coursed through the third painting. This Changó was one exalted son of a bitch, Quinn concluded, but Renata made no such judgment. Tragedy was inherent in power, she tried to tell the students, whom she wanted to charm, shock, and instruct in the cruelty of these peculiar-looking gods.

Renata saw Quinn arrive and she smiled at him, not a large smile, and kept talking. She wore a white blouse and black skirt, pedestrian uniform of the museum guides; but she enhanced the uniform, and Quinn decided there was no garment she would not enhance if she wrapped herself in it. The student tour moved on through Spanish, French and Dutch paintings, and at its end Quinn said to her, “Art is long but life is short. Have lunch with me,” and she took him to the American Café near the museum where, she said, she went often. She wanted only coffee.

“I don’t like your friend Hemingway,” she said.

“I can’t blame you for that. He didn’t behave well last night.”

“He hit that man for nothing. The man was singing.”

“That’s why he hit him.”

“You shoot a bird when it sings?”

“He felt insulted by the man’s stupidity.”

“I am insulted by
his
stupidity.”

“I can’t blame you, but he’s not well, and he thrives on aggression. I don’t want to talk about Hemingway. I want to talk about you. I want to go out with you. Take you to the beach, or dinner, go dancing at some nightclub, anything.”

“I hate to dance.”

“Why?”

“I do it badly. What I do badly I do not do. My mother loves to dance. She won prizes for her dancing.”

“My father was a great dancer. He won prizes for his waltzing.”

“My mother won a prize for waltzing.”

“This is fate. We are children of prize waltzers. We are meant to dance together.”

“I don’t dance.”

“I’ll teach you. I’m a pretty fair dancer.”

“I don’t want to learn dancing. I am learning other things.”

“What things?”

“I’m learning to be in love.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. I wish I could say it was with me.”

“It is others.”

“Others? More than one others?”

“Two others. One is a diplomat in the Argentine embassy. The other teaches anthropology at the university. He is very fine, the finest man I can imagine.”

“You love the fine one.”

“I love them both.”

“You have a busy love life.”

“It is a curse. They have discovered that I love them both and they are crazy jealous. They are both mad to marry me. The diplomat wants to take me to Europe, but I can’t do that. My mother would kill me.”

“You love the anthropologist more than the diplomat.”

“He needs me more. He’s married.”

“What do you do for him?”

“I drive him and his friends. He has a car but sometimes doesn’t want to drive. I listen when he talks. People call him ‘El Rey,’ the king, because he owns the world wherever he is. He excites me like nobody ever has. But because he is jealous we have a big fight. I don’t know where he is.”

“Why are you sitting here talking to me when you could be with your diplomat or out looking for your fine and powerful king to patch things up?”

“I am fond of you. Instantly.
Anoche.
You have a manner. You seem to be different.”

“From your lovers?”

“Yes. I think so. You have a way. How you look at a woman. It is possible I could marry you some day, but it is too soon to know.”

“Your mother would kill you. Besides, you don’t want to get married, especially to three men. Or do you?”

“Marriage is exactly what I want.”

“I wouldn’t have guessed it.”

“I think you can be angry. You look angry with me. You looked at Hemingway in anger.”

“Mostly I’m angry with myself. Would you really like to have three lovers at the same time?”

“It is possible. Many women do it. Men have many women, some women have many men.”

“I only need one woman.”

“You are a rare man.”

“You are a rare woman to think I’m rare for needing only one.”

“Men are liars.”

“Women are greater liars and they are better at it than men. Do you want some more coffee?”

“I have to go back to work.”

“I’ll meet you later. We can go to dinner.”

“Maybe another night.”

“Am I on the way to being your third lover?”

“
Quizás.
But not today. It is too confusing today.”

“I’m going to see your brother-in-law Max and ask if I can write for his newspaper.”

“He is very much in love with me but I don’t read his newspaper, which is for the tourists who do not need much news. But he is very intelligent and he seems to know everybody in Cuba. He talks literature with my friend Alejo Carpentier, he plays golf with Bing Crosby, and he has lunch with the gangster Trafficante.”

“Will you ask him to hire me?”

“He will hire you without my asking. He always needs writers. They come and go like gypsies.”

“Will you reconsider dinner with me tonight?”

“I think it’s not the best night.”

“Maybe it will turn out to be the best.”

“You are persistent, but I must go back.”

Quinn walked her into the museum and to an office where the guides gathered between tours. He was about to say he would come back to see her later in the day, but she saw something behind him and her face registered dark surprise. She walked away from Quinn and toward a man entering the museum. She stopped and talked into the man’s face, intimate talk. Then she shook her head. The man talked while she listened and she nodded yes. She looked around the museum to see if they were being watched, and they were. He put his arms around her and kissed her, held her, then went out the way he came. Renata saw that people had seen the kiss. How could they not? She came back to Quinn and said, “I cannot talk any more.”