The Color of Summer: or The New Garden of Earthly Delights (30 page)

The bayonet-riddled body of the guard fell onto the newly built roadway.

They were now flying along above the almost infinite plains of Camagüey.

“Why hasn’t anything been planted down there? Why is all that land going to waste? Answer me!”

“Comandante,” replied a livestock specialist, “those are the plains. No crops grow there. It’s a pastureland. That’s why at your own suggestion we planted pangola grass.”

“Forget pangola. That’s a perfect place for California apples.”

“The climate isn’t right for apples, Comandante,” the agricultural adviser hazarded.

“So our climate isn’t right for growing California apples, but California is? It’s very obvious what you people are saying—you’re saying that imperialism is more powerful than we are.
They
can plant apples in California wherever they want to, but
we
can’t plant an apple tree if our life depends on it. It’s a crime, planting all that land down there in pangola grass when Cuba could be the world’s leading exporter of California apples. Why, we could sell our apples to California itself. But
no-o-o,
with imperialist agents like you people occupying key positions, we’ll
never
get out of this state of underdevelopment, or out of a single-crop economy either. Execute those two men immediately!”

Two bayonet-riddled bodies fell into a stubbly brown field planted in withered California apple trees.

“American imperialism is the Great Satan,” said the Lady of the Veil. “
Of course
you can grow California apples.”

But Fifo, rather than answering the Lady of the Veil, sat gazing out the window, lost in thought. Sometimes he would use his spyglass, sometimes his large spectacles, sometimes the telescope—still others, he would bring sophisticated binoculars to his eyes.

“What’s the meaning of all those naked men down there?” he suddenly asked his whole entourage.

“Comandante,” said the Minister of Education unctuously, “that’s the concentration camp for homosexuals that you yourself designed and that I built on the instant. We have fifteen thousand fairies locked up in there.”

“What?! What are you saying!? A concentration camp!? What will our honored guest think of us? That we’re a bunch of Fascist barbarians, that I’m some sort of Hitler, running concentration camps? Are you saying that in this nation where there is
nothing
but liberty and freedom we have concentration camps?”

“Comandante, you yourself gave the order to build them.”

The Lady of the Veil, fascinated, peered out the window.

“It’s a rehabilitation camp for criminals,” Fifo explained to her.

“Rehabilitation is most necessary,” the Lady of the Veil replied.

“Yes indeed,” Fifo agreed, and turning to the Minister of Education, he said, “
Rehabilitation,
but never, ever, ‘concentration camps.’ What we do is educate or reeducate; we never hold anyone by force. Those young men are in that camp voluntarily because they want to be reeducated,” he continued, meanwhile using his spyglass to be sure that the electrified fences around the concentration camp were all in good working order and there weren’t any breaks in them. “If you think that’s a concentration camp down there, that means that you yourself are not sufficiently rehabilitated. Guards! Throw this man out the window! Throw him into that reeducation center so he can start his reeducation as soon as possible!”

“Should we bayonet him first?”

“From this height it won’t be necessary,” Fifo replied, and he lit one of his huge cigars.

That day the fairies in the concentration camp had a celebration: the Minister of Education, the terrible Gallego Fernández, who had designed the camp, suddenly fell to earth in their midst. To everyone’s glee, body parts went flying.

“By the way,” said Fifo, turning to the leader of his escort as the minister splattered below, “why did you ask me whether the Minister of Education should be bayoneted? I want it very clear that we tossed him into the reeducation center so that he could be reeducated. Or do you think that reeducating a person and killing him are the same thing?”

And before the escort leader could defend himself, Fifo ordered the rest of the escort to tie his hands, bayonet him, and throw him out the window of the helicopter.

“You really can’t trust a man that stupid,” Fifo said as he exhaled a cloud of smoke. “He could be an enemy. How could I never have realized it, how could I have such a man as one of my escorts? Uff.”

And on the spot, he appointed one of the remaining guards squad leader.

The helicopter flew out of that region into the former province of Oriente, so after exchanging a few words with the Lady of the Veil, Fifo, showing great interest, began to peer out the window.

“What are all those boxes down there?” he asked as they flew over a city.

“That’s the city of Holguín, Comandante. It has a population of three million people and it’s the capital of the province of the same name,” replied the copilot, who was from Holguín and proud of it.

“Well, that city is very badly located,” Fifo observed. “It looks like down there in all that flatland there ought to be a bullfrog farm. I want the whole population moved out of there, all those boxes torn down, and a big lake full of bullfrogs put in.”

“Comandante,” offered the copilot, who loved his hometown with all his heart and would do anything to save it, “it’s hard to put a lake in the middle of a flat field, but Bayamo and Santiago de Cuba are just a little farther on, and they’re surrounded by mountains and have lots of good big rivers. It’s the perfect place to build a bullfrog farm.”

“Sure,” said Fifo sarcastically, “and destroy two national monuments and two national shrines—Bayamo, the Cradle of Independence; and Santiago de Cuba, the Cradle of the Revolution. You swine! You counterrevolutionary swine! Holguín has always been a shitty little town that’s produced little shits like you! And you want to sacrifice two heroic cities in exchange for
shit!
Execute this man immediately!”

“Could I make one last request?” the copilot pleaded.

“Speak.”

“I want my corpse thrown out over the city of Holguín.”

“Request granted,” said Fifo.

But by the time the bayoneted body of the copilot hit the ground, in place of the city of Holguín there was an enormous bullfrog-populated lake, into which the body fell—inspiring a deafening protest from the bullfrogs.

The helicopter was now flying over a swiftly flowing river.

“What’s that?” asked an irritated and suspicious Fifo.

“Comandante, that’s the Río Cauto, which despite its name, which is ‘Cautious,’ is the swiftest and most powerful river in the country,” one of the few ministers still alive had the courage to respond, thinking that such a basic answer could hardly get him into much trouble.

Oh, but the comandante looked down in rage upon those swiftly flowing waters, and then more furiously yet at the minister.

“
Cautious!
So in this country, where everything should be crystal-clear, where no one should be afraid of anything, we have a
cautious
river—a fearful, circumspect river, and river that’s a little
wary,
and therefore a river that isn’t fully convinced of the Revolution’s truth. I’ll bet that’s where the armies of rodents that are undermining the nation come from! And naturally, since it’s a freshwater river, Bloodthirsty Shark can’t swim up it, traitors use it as their hideout, and the river, the very
cautious
river, very cautiously and circumspectly protects them. I want that river dried up
NOW!
This instant! And
you!
” he said, turning to the minister and boxing his ears, “you should have been more
cautious
and not had such nice things to say about a traitorous river, much less in front of a foreign visitor to our nation. Do you think wartime secrets and the strategies and strengths of an enemy ought to be divulged to a foreign power? Does nobody around here know the rules for national security and international protocol? But that’s all right, there’s no need for you to know those rules, because you’re going headfirst into the Río Cauto, and you’ll disappear along with it.”

At a sign from Fifo, the minister was executed and tossed into the river, where his body fell into the now dried-up riverbed.

“Comandante! Comandante! We’re coming to the Cradle of the Revolution!” exclaimed in unison the last two ministers still alive (including the dying Prime Minister), knowing that Fifo was always happy when he came to the city in which he had proclaimed his victory.

The pilot circled the city so that Fifo could take in the view. He knew that Fifo always liked to show it off to foreign visitors. But this time, Fifo looked down pensively at Santiago de Cuba.

“It resembles a great amphitheater,” said the Lady of the Veil.

“You’re right! You’re right! A huge amphitheater!” cried Fifo. “That’s exactly the image I was searching for and couldn’t put my finger on! An amphitheater! All those mountains rising in ever higher tiers and circling the city that way—why, it makes a perfect amphitheater! Who needs another city—what we need in this country is an amphitheater. Imagine,” he cried jubilantly, turning to the Lady of the Veil, “imagine what grand and glorious political celebrations we could have in an amphitheater like that—an amphitheater with acoustics magnified by those magnificent mountains. What an echo it would have! Why, I could talk for eight or ten hours and my voice would echo for a year. . . . We’ve got to build an amphitheater. Tear down that city and start today.”

“But Comandante, it’s the Cradle of the Revolution, it’s a heroic city,” said the two ministers, almost in unison.

“Execute those two men—they’re deviationists! Around here the cradle, the babe, the Revolution, and the hero, all in one, is
me!”

When the last two ministers had been thrown out of the helicopter into the amphitheater, Fifo looked out over the great stage and with a note of nostalgia gave his next order.

“Right there, in the center of the amphitheater, I want a gigantic statue of White Udder, the cow I have loved more than any other cow in my entire life.”

For a few moments, Fifo was oblivious to everything around him; his every thought lay with that dear departed cow. . . . In life he had loved this noble creature so deeply, and she had given him such delight, that when she died he had covered the island with larger-than-life-size statues to her memory. . . . All the other people on the helicopter, including the pilot, also fell into a reverie, trying (as they always did) to imitate Fifo’s every pose and gesture. This caused the helicopter to miss by inches crashing into a gigantic mound of rock that rose into the clouds.

“Shit! What’s that?” cried Fifo, coming out of his meditations.

“It’s the Baracoa Anvil, Comandante,” said the new commander of the guards. “We almost crashed into it.”

“You mean I was about to die in a helicopter crash and you, commander of the guard, who should have been watching out for me, didn’t even notice? That’s the way you guard my life? Your duty is to watch over me day and night! I want this man executed as an object lesson to the other guards! Bayonets!” he commanded, signalling to the other guards.

And instantly the few guards who were left alive bayoneted their leader.

“Throw him down on that Baracoa Anvil,” Fifo ordered, “and let’s head back to Havana. I’ve got a million things to do before the Carnival starts. Oh, and about that anvil there—melt it down. It’s an obscurantist medieval symbol or something—anyway, it’s got nothing to do with our new society. Melt it down and put up a giant hammer and sickle.”

And instantly Fifo fell asleep, but as the aircraft passed over the huge lake where the city of Holguín had formerly stood, the deafening croaking of the bullfrogs woke him.

“What in hell is
that!?
Have the Americans landed?” asked Fifo groggily.

“Comandante,” replied one of the few surviving technical advisors, “it’s the bullfrog farm you ordered built.”

“Bullfrogs!?
Bullfrogs!?
Are you nuts!? Whose idea was that?”

And since no one dared answer
that
question, Fifo got even angrier.

“Do you mean to tell me you’ve destroyed a city full of hardworking people so you could raise bullfrogs!? Which one of you idiot sons of bitches did such a thing? Whose idea was it?”

No one answered. Fifo ordered the escort to torture the technical advisers until they talked. Finally, one of the three advisers who were left said that the idea had come from Fifo himself. Fifo turned black with rage. So they thought he was a madman capable of such imbecility? And the adviser was instantly sentenced to death and thrown into the lake. The two other advisers, who refused to talk, died from their tortures and their bodies were thrown into the lake too. Several members of the guard began to be interrogated and tortured by other members. And so, one by one, they were killed and their bodies thrown out over various provinces. When the aircraft arrived in Havana, all that remained (with the exception of Fifo, of course) were two members of his private escort, the Lady of the Veil, and the pilot.