The Color of Summer: or The New Garden of Earthly Delights (13 page)

D
ELFÍN AND
V
ALLIEGAS
:
(in unison, and leaping into the ocean)

I am a silent fish—
a cod!

(Suddenly transformed into codfish, the two men swim off into the sunset.)

F
IFO
:

Goddammit, two
more
sons of bitches that got away from me!

Oh, well, that means there’s that much more to go around, he-he.

Plus, what contempt for the proprieties,

for the
comme il faut!

R
AÚL
:

Fifo, Fifo, Fifo,

please, forget it,

don’t fret your old gray head about it;

for the next appearance we’re going to resurrect

a poet of such great genius (however epicene),

and such renown, and such respect,

that people will forget that obscene scene.

F
IFO
:

Who can you mean, eh?

R
AÚL
:

José Lezama Lima!

The
M
ALECÓN
darkens and the lights come up on
K
EY
W
EST
.
Delfín Proust and Endinio Valliegas swim in to shore. Immediately, everyone abandons Odiseo Ruego and Angel Gastaluz and runs over to see the new arrivals.

A J
OURNALIST
:

These
two, you know, are the real thing, you betcha.

Not like those two
Orígenes
poets that were dragged in on a stretcher.

D
ELFÍN
:

What?! I thought they rode in on sharks’ backs.

That’s why I braved this old queen’s attacks.

A shark’s the only man or animal that brings me to climax.

T
HE
J
OURNALIST
:

Yeah, you’re right, sharks’ backs, you betcha.

Which of course brought them under our suspicion.

But they collapsed from malnutrition,

and
that
explains the stretcher.

A L
ADY IN
J
EWELS
:

That arrival
does
lend itself to suspicion—

we all know the sharks are Fifo’s agents,

so they should have come in on sea serpents

if they expected us to trust them.

D
ELFÍN
:

And Avellaneda—what will be
her
reception?

Will
she
be under suspicion?

T
HE
B
EJEWELED
L
ADY
:

Oh, you know, we’ll do the usual—

We’ll make the standard fuss.

The problem is, we don’t know anything about her,

whether she’s one of Fifo’s spies or one of
us.

A P
OLITICAL
L
EADER
:

She’ll definitely be looked into. And we’ll thoroughly search her purse.

You can never be too careful. She might be carrying a bomb!

D
ELFÍN
:

Heavens, before I subject my person
or
my purse

to these idiotic (and very rude!) inspections,

I’m going back where I came from!

Delfín jumps into the ocean and swims back to the Malecón, though not
without first butting Avellaneda’s boat with his head—the boat bobbles uncontrollably. With the arrival of Delfín, the lights come up on the
M
ALECÓN
.
Just then, the arrival of the poet José Lezama Lima is announced. Great air of expectancy. A squad of midgets comes on stage, bearing a huge stretcher on which there is a gigantic ball of a thing with what looks like a tablecloth draped over it. They set the enormous stretcher down on the wall of the Malecón. María Luisa Bautista gently tugs at the cloth, and from under it appears the poet Lezama Lima, who is dressed in a Greek toga-contraption. The poet gets to his feet with some difficulty and, still standing on the stretcher, begins his speech.

J
OSÉ
L
EZAMA
L
IMA
:

Oh, I fervently pray that you escape,
since I could not, for dark Atropos, aided by the gondolier of watery footsteps who plied his pole to pull away from me before I could halt him by uttering his name, cut her skein and cut off my retreat.

Myriads of horrid Lestrigons, flesh-eating savages, swooped down upon me
from a darkling plain—antelopes, serpents, pink fenestrations,
phallic cornets, tiny elves making erotic signs, enchanted palanquins from Tibet—a monstrous dog (perhaps a whippet) swimming backward through the blood—and the tiara of the Helot zealot.

F
IFO
:

What the
hell
is he talking about? Who on earth
is
this idiot!?

L
EZAMA
:
(unfazed)

I suckle, errant marshy mallow,

blind, thy nectarous drops in clots.

Marmots, marmots, marmots,

marmots marmots from far Tibet, oh-ho.

I shall not hunt the heron, nor the thrush,

nor even the magnificent wild boar

whose carnal plow

assails me with an anal rush

and makes me yearn for more.

Cats upon cats—both he and she—

and gold-plated toenail clippers,

all of that I see,

plus Old Rosa’s slippers—

that goat-herding hag with carbuncles,

the witch of Perronales,

a place where, when Persephone

returns from underground,

septentrional storms beat down.

A magic spell, the wind plants a lighthouse upon the beach.

A trick employed by cunning Euridice

to snare succulent mameys.

Canines of accursèd flames.

Aberrant contortions.

The lemon tree, the almond tree,

and swarms and swarms of hornets.

O faun of poultry farms, slip nude I beg

into my marmoreal bed

with stealthy
night-snail tread.

The rings of Uranus—or is it Saturn?—

for your sweet arrival burn,

for you shall cunningly dive, ah-ha!,

into the repertoire of my saliva.

O glorious grace-filled secular world,

O faun that plays upon my toconema curled

making it stir and rise at thy embrace—

O bed-meadow infused with sacred grace!

The deeper the digging, the more treasure,

the deeper the hole, the greater the pleasure,

O buried Pharaoh of blind eye.

The slippery attack,

like a mule’s kick,

fitting rings to finger—

ring after ring, kick after kick—

this is a humdinger!

F
IFO
:

Somebody shut up that prick!

And in the ocean fling him!

Soldiers and midgets, carrying long sticks, roll Lezama along the Malecón down to the seaside, to the sound of tremendous noise and shouting.

L
EZAMA
:
(as he rolls down to the sea)

This plunge into the depths shall be my epiphany;

I greet my descent like proud Antigone.

But wait a moment—tell me, can ya?—

is it true that my friend Rodrigo de Triana

has given up on sodomy?

He falls into the water, causing the tide to rise so high that it floats the Malecón—and swamps Avellaneda’s boat.

A
VELLANEDA
:
(bobbing about in the waves)

Sea—

for the world,

profound

consolation.

I think I’ll fly.

Perhaps in the sky

I shall find

liberation.

F
IFO
:
(to Paula Amanda)