The Color of Summer: or The New Garden of Earthly Delights (29 page)

Fifo emerged from his underground palace surrounded by his personal escort—imposing specimens able to bring Satan himself to his knees by merely cupping their balls—and made his way to the presidential helicopter on the palace roof, which had been turned into a huge helipad scrubbed down night and day by three hundred diligent midgets. Followed by several government ministers, the Lady of the Veil (a personage who was traveling incognito, and about whom it was known only that she—or he?—was a prominent figure in the Arab world), a group of technical advisers, two physicians, the escort, and the pilot and copilot, the Supreme Leader boarded his helicopter. “Take us around the whole island,” he instructed the pilot, and instantly the helicopter rose aloft. Armed with an antique spyglass, binoculars, a telescope, several pairs of magnifying glasses, and other artifacts for seeing at a distance, Fifo leaned back in his presidential seat, lit a cigar, and ordered the pilot to fly over the island
slowly,
so he could inspect everything before the Carnival. “First of all,” he said, “find Bloodthirsty Shark for me. I want to see how he’s doing.” The gigantic helicopter descended almost to the surface of the ocean, where the great shark had called all the other sharks together for an inspection and an antirodent exhortation, while he himself remained forever vigilant. When Fifo saw Bloodthirsty Shark, his jowly face filled with tenderness and he softly caressed his long white prickly beard. And when Bloodthirsty Shark saw the presidential helicopter, he emerged and did fantastic pirouettes on the surface of the waves, exhibiting the flexibility, vigor, and virility of his powerful body.

“Throw him a piece of human flesh,” Fifo ordered the Prime Minister. “His appetite must be kept keen.”

It was the Prime Minister’s habit, and also his duty, to always bring along a sack of human flesh on these inspection junkets, pieces of which he would throw down to Bloodthirsty Shark as a gift from Fifo, who would sometimes pull on a pair of rubber gloves and personally toss the tasty morsels to his pet. When the Prime Minister heard Fifo’s order this time, though, he blanched. Fifo hadn’t announced this junket beforehand, and everything had come together so suddenly (as was almost always the case with Fifo’s whims) that the Prime Minister hadn’t had time to send off one of the household midgets to kill one of the prisoners and throw him into a sack.

“What’s the matter?” cried Fifo. “Where’s the sack?”

“Comandante, w-w-we left so fast I forgot it.”

“What!?” roared Fifo, livid, while Bloodthirsty Shark continued leaping about in the water, jaws agape in expectation of the usual tasty tidbit. “I have never heard of such dereliction of duty! I ought to have you shot by the firing squad this minute, for high treason!”

“I apologize, Comandante,” whined the Prime Minister. “I’ve been so busy with the preparations for the Carnival and the palace festivities—it just slipped my mind. I promise it’ll never happen again.”

“All right, I will spare your life this time,” Fifo relented. “So we’ll just cut off one of your arms and throw it to him.”

At a signal from Fifo, the two physicians amputated one of the Prime Minister’s arms, and the Prime Minister, using the only hand he had left, tossed his amputated limb straight into the shark’s maw. The immense fish showed its thanks by leaping out of the water almost as high as the helicopter itself, then plunging torpedo-like once more into the sea, showering the aircraft with spray.

“The arm of a prime minister must be quite a delicacy,” remarked Fifo, now in a much better humor, while the helicopter increased its altitude. Then turning again to the pilot, he said, “Let’s fly over Guanabo. I want to see how many faggots are on the beach today. It’s a workday, so everybody
ought
to be at work.”

But there were people swimming and sunning among the rocks. This made Fifo furious again, and with his walkie-talkie he ordered the Minister of the Interior to round up everybody on the beach.

“It is not moral for persons to swim without the veil,” remarked the Lady of the Veil. “And doing so in that way, half naked and in the sight of everyone, is indeed a mortal sin. May Allah protect us . . .”

But Fifo ignored the Lady of the Veil—he was still looking out the window of the helicopter.

“What are all those holes that somebody’s made down there along the coast?” he asked the Prime Minister, who was softly moaning as he bled to death.

“Those are the trenches that you ordered dug last week, Comandante . . .”

“Fill ’em in and have an oil well drilled where every one of ’em used to be! I’m sure there’s oil down there; I can almost
smell
it.”

“But Comandante . . .” one of the technical advisors screwed up his courage to stammer, “ten years ago we drilled test wells, and there’s no oil here.”

“What!?” Fifo roared again. “Ten years!? You’re telling me that nature can’t change in ten years?! You’re telling me that nature is more powerful than we are?! You’re telling me you don’t believe in dialectical materialism?! Oil!
Oil!
I’m sure there’s a river of oil down there. Oh, yes, I can smell it. And you, traitor, what you want is for us to remain in a state of underdevelopment forever, and for lack of fuel not to be able to go to war with our enemies. Which is a greater danger than ever now, I remind you, when the czar of Russia has cut off our oil supplies.”

“Oil is basic for the life of a nation,” affirmed the Lady of the Veil.

“Of course it’s basic!” brayed Fifo. “But this son of a bitch doesn’t want us to have any!” And pointing at the adviser, he cried to his escort, “Shoot him!”

“We’ll have to stab him,” replied the squad leader. “It’s too dangerous to the passengers to have a firing squad on a helicopter in midair.”

“All right, if there’s no other way, stab him,” conceded Fifo grudgingly.

And within seconds the guards had riddled the adviser’s body with the bayonets affixed to their rifles and thrown the corpse into the sea—to the further delight of Bloodthirsty Shark, who was swimming along at full speed just under the presidential helicopter.

Now calmer, Fifo spoke to the pilot: “See if you can find Skunk in a Funk somewhere around here. I want to use this spyglass to see what he’s up to. He thinks I’ve swallowed that bullshit about his ‘rehabilitation,’ but I’m nobody’s fool. The only reason I’ve spared his life is to see how this story turns out, but when it’s over I’m eliminating him. We wouldn’t advise him to kid himself. . . .”

“Comandante, Skunk in a Funk isn’t in Guanabo today.”

“All right, then, let’s move on. One faggot more, one faggot less—big deal. There are plenty to go around, lord knows.”

They were now flying over the province of Matanzas, directly above its tallest prominence.

“Will you get a load of that mountain!”

“Comandante, sir, that’s the Matanzas Breadloaf.”

“Breadloaf my sweet ass! There’s no bread in Cuba! Bread is a Christian bourgeois prejudice! I want that mountain of bread leveled this instant, and yautías planted in its place.”

“Comandante,” said the Minister of Agriculture, who was along for the ride, “it isn’t easy to level that mountain. And besides, yautías won’t grow in limestone soils.”

“What do
you
know about yautías or soils!?” Fifo shouted, a veritable ball of rage. “Yautías! Yautías! I want yautías, and I want them
there!
You want to deprive me of my yautías, and deprive this country of what I promised it more than forty years ago and haven’t been able to give it yet? Now I see the cause of all this: we don’t have yautías because you’ve sabotaged the plans. You’re a swine, and an agent of the CIA, and a son of a bitch. Stab him!” he ordered his escorts, who instantly and professionally obeyed. “The minute the Carnival is over, that mountain is coming down,” Fifo said, and then he turned once more to the pilot: “Now take me to Zapata Swamp. I want to see how my crocodiles are doing.”

They flew at full speed to the swamp. Fifo began counting the crocodiles.

“Since the last time I was here, twenty-seven males and eleven females have died,” he calculated. “Obviously this unhealthy climate in the swamp is bad for my little crocs. I want all the crocodiles moved out of this swamp to the Bay of Matanzas! They can breathe pure air there!”

Instantly the dying Prime Minister got on his shortwave radio and put out a call to the Army of Matanzas, the Territorial Militia, and the Provincial Navy, and in less than half an hour, more than a million crocodiles invaded the Bay of Matanzas.

Beaming at this quick action, Fifo ordered the inspection trip to continue.

“What’re all those plants down there?” he asked as they flew over the Yumurí Valley.

“A stand of palm trees, sir,” answered the pilot.

“Cut ’em down and plant lentils.” Then turning to his guest of honor, the Lady of the Veil, he cooed: “Lentils have a tremendous amount of iron.”

“Iron is
also
very important,” the Lady of the Veil replied, looking down to see a huge bulldozer razing all the palms in the lovely valley.

They were now passing over the province of Las Villas, directly above the dam that supplied water to the city of Santa Clara.

“What’s that?” asked Fifo.

“It’s the Camilo Cienfuegos Dam that you ordered me to build, which I did, sir, in less than a year, surpassing all our goals,” Fifo’s chief of waterworks answered with pride.

“Well, tear it down and build an army training field. The enemy is more important than water!”

“But Comandante. . . ,” the adviser hesitantly suggested, “it’s the largest dam in the country, it cost millions of dollars to build, plus doing away with Hanabanilla Falls; it supplies water not only to Santa Clara but to all the fields and even to the Niña Bonita fish hatchery that you yourself founded. . . .”

“Oh, where do these advisers of mine come from?” sighed Fifo dramatically. “Not one of them is a true revolutionary. We’re at war, and you’re thinking about water instead of the enemy. That dam should never have been built in that spot in the first place, right in the center of the country, at our very geographical heart. Surely it’s the first location the enemy will attack. Now I see it all very clearly—
very
clearly—you built that dam there so that when the enemy invaded we’d be wiped out!’

“No! No! I built it there because that’s where the river . . .”

“River my ass! You think I don’t see through you? The only one that knows where the rivers run is me! The only one that makes the plans around here is me! The only one that’s trying to save the country is me! I want you to order that dam torn down RIGHT NOW!”

With tears in his eyes, the adviser gave the order to dynamite the dam.

“Now, slit his throat,” Fifo ordered the guards.

The adviser, as his throat was being slit, saw the enormous dam, his great masterpiece, blown to bits with dynamite, and saw the city of Santa Clara flooded. His body, hurled from the helicopter, was swept away in the rushing waters.

“Water is not a necessity,” said the Lady of the Veil, “but without oil one cannot live.”

“And what’s that thing down there that looks like a snake?” asked Fifo, looking out the window.

“It’s the Río Máximo, Comandante,” said one of the members of his escort, who was from the province of Camagüey.

“The Río Máximo? The
Río Máximo?!
Is that what you said? How dare you insult me in that way! The only
Máximo
around here is me! How can you say that there’s a river that’s the Máximo when
I’m
the Máximo, when
I’m
the eternal spring to which all the peoples of the world make pilgrimages to drink? And
nothing,
do you hear—
nothing!
—can be more Máximo than me, because there’s no word that means greater than the
greatest!
So, you weasly son of a bitch, you’ve insulted me and mocked me—you want to give the title of Máximo to a river, a teeny-tiny creek, and make
me
some tinkly piece of shit! I’ll teach you to minimize
me!
To
think
that a man with those ideas, a traitor of such proportions, should be a member of my escort! Execute this man immediately! . . . Oh, and about that Río Máximo—pave it over, build a highway on top of it.”