The Color of Summer: or The New Garden of Earthly Delights (37 page)

After burning Mayoya at the stake, the immense crowd of Disinvited Nobodies continued to mill about at the edge of the ocean, not far from the entrance of Fifo’s palace. From time to time several of the Dissed & Pissed, as they had begun to call themselves, would dive down into the water, gnaw at the Island’s platform for a while, and reemerge, tanned by the ocean breezes and the beams of the artificial-tropical sun.

There they were, forming a large human landfill beside the sea (a king, several bishops, former Miss Universes, internationally renowned landscape artists, prizewinning actors and actresses, the leaders of peace movements, generals, well-known celebrities from all walks of life, and thousands of whores—all university graduates—plus the usual bunch of S&M queens, among them Odoriferous Gunk), when they saw Karilda Olivar Lubricious running toward them along the beach, pursued pellmell by her husband, who was brandishing a sword in the
most
alarming way and screaming that he was going to cut off her head. Hot on the heels of Karilda came the Dowager Duchess de Valero, with a huge pair of binoculars hanging around her naked, wrinkled neck. And as though all that weren’t enough, the fleeing women were accompanied by an army of she-cats, mewling fiercely.

Faced with that astounding spectacle (which was now passing directly before them, leaving a wake of sea foam, flying sand, and pulverized stones and sea urchins), the Dissed & Miffed rose to their feet as one and stood upon the rocks.

“What, Oh Lord, is the cause of this latest commotion?” asked Bishop O’Condom, raising his hands and rosary toward heaven.

Well, Miss Pisshog, I mean bishop, If you’ll just keep your pants on I will tell you.

Ahem. For many years, too many to mention, Karilda Olivar Lubricious, followed around by her she-cats and the Dowager Duchess de Valero, had spent her days wandering through the parks of the province of Matanzas, shaking the coconut trees in the hope that a black man would fall out of one of them and screw her and her entourage—including, naturally, the she-cats. When one or another black man, terrified at that visitation, would hang on for dear life to the reeling and quaking palm fronds, Karilda’s sweet she-cats would climb up the coconut tree and bite, scratch, and meow at the poor man until he finally gave up and shinnied down.

Naturally, this flight of every black man in Matanzas to the treetops had occurred in the first place because of the ever more demanding come-ons to which they were subjected by Karilda and the Dowager Duchess. But they could not find shelter even in the highest branches of the coconut trees, because no matter how they tried to hide, the Dowager Duchess de Valero and her binoculars could ferret them out, and the black men had no choice but to fall (legs and arms akimbo) from the treetops and service those merciless creatures.

And of course word of these events got around. Throughout Matanzas, all you could see was coconut trees (shaken by Karilda and the Dowager Duchess de Valero) raining down coconuts and black men who had to turn sexual athlete on the spot. The news of all this finally reached Karilda’s young husband, a man who was completely bonkers and therefore madly in love with his senile, lecherous poetess. Karilda’s husband was an opera singer, and therefore an expert sword fighter—that was why he always wore an enormous nineteenth-century sword as part of his daily (though outlandish) costume. On hearing the news of his wife’s promiscuity, the great sword fighter and opera singer ran (with his sword) to Central Park in Matanzas, where he caught her
in flagrante delicto
—his beloved wife and the Dowager Duchess de Valero were busily shaking a coconut tree, hoping that a heavenly black stud would fall out. The aggrieved husband, giving a war cry more typical of a samurai than a baritone, charged—saber aloft—at the grove of coconut trees. All the black men ran for the trees again, but Karilda and the Dowager Duchess had no choice but to run for it, period, and so, followed by their faithful retinue of she-cats and that enraged, bloodthirsty man, they hightailed it along the coast—Karilda, the Dowager Duchess, the she-cats, and the young but crazed husband, down the Havana shoreline, passing the crowd that now called itself the Dissed & Miffed, or Dissed & Pissed, I’m not sure which. . . . Anyway, before she got to the huge armored-steel Fifonian gate, Karilda started screaming so loudly that her screams penetrated the huge salons of the palace and even reached the ears of Fifo himself. (Karilda was one of the official invitees.)

“Open the gate and then close it immediately!” came Fifo’s orders.

The huge gate rose, and Karilda rushed through the opening like a streak of lightning followed by the Dowager Duchess and the she-cats. Skunk in a Funk, Mahoma, Hiram, and SuperSatanic also took the opportunity to return to the reception after attending the burning of Mayoya. But when the great sword fighter and karate star (I forgot to say he was a black belt in karate, too) tried to get in, the gate fell in his face like a guillotine. The desperate (and desperately jealous) husband sang his (baritone) song of woe to the Dissed & Pissed, and then he joined them, waiting for the huge armored-steel gate to open again at the inauguration of the Carnival.

“Then I’ll kill her,” he said.

And Bishop O’Condom once more raised his hands to heaven.

Reinaldo was out on the balcony of the apartment that belonged to Aristotle Pumariega, who was trying everything he could think of to persuade his wife to become a lesbian, because Pumariega could experience orgasm only when he watched two women making love. Pumariega’s wife, who was seventeen years old (he was in his sixties), absolutely refused to engage in that sort of sexual behavior. The argument had gone on for hours. Gabriel, bored, was looking out over the stalled traffic on the Rampa. Just then PornoPop, The Only Remaining Go-Go Fairy Queen in Cuba, arrived in an absolute
delirium
of delight, because she’d been invited to Fifo’s big party. She was going to read her Pornopoems at the Grand Oneirical Theological Political Philosophical Satirical Conference! And without further ado—more or less as a rehearsal, but in the most Aristophanic way (since she was, after all, in Aristotle’s house)—she began to recite several of her brilliant poems. When she finished, she went over to Reinaldo and sat down beside him on the balcony.

“Can you believe Joseito died!” she sighed.

“Joseito? Who’s Joseito?” Gabriel asked.

“José Lezama Lima, silly. They buried him this morning.”

“Oh, yeah, terrible,” Reinaldo said, looking back out toward the Rampa without another word.

“Oh,
darling!
I almost forgot to tell you—the section of the congress on dreams—
Impossible
Dreams it’s called, isn’t that precious!—is going to be chaired by André Breton, who’s coming back from the dead just for this event!”

But Gabriel just looked out over the Rampa.

That night Reinaldo (Gabriel forgotten, now Skunk in a Funk) went with Hiram to Lenin Park. They were going to steal all the mariposa jasmine (Cuba’s symbolic flower, since as everyone knows,
mariposa
means fairy in Spanish) they could, to sell it on the black market so they could buy some cream cheese and soda crackers for their poor empty stomachs. At nightfall, staggering under a load of white flowers, they stopped at the bridge over the reservoir in the park, which had been built by Celia Sánchez herself. There, Skunk in a Funk told Delfín Proust about Lezama’s death, and as he spoke he began to sob. Delfín tried to console Reinaldo, but Skunk in a Funk’s crying got louder and louder. Finally, dropping the huge load of flowers, Gabriel leaned out over the water and began to howl. At that, La Reine des Araignées picked up some of the long branches of jasmine and began flagellating the weeping queen, who ran back and forth on the bridge, shrieking and wailing. Soon the white petals of the flowers covered the queen’s bruised and welted body. But Delfín, not satisfied with that, ran back to the vast field of mariposa flowers, picked every one of them, and returned to the bridge, where she went on flagellating (now harder than ever) the face and body of Skunk in a Funk, who was bleeding and crying out
Lezama! Lezama! Lezama!
Finally, giving one last enormous howl, the queen, covered in blood and white flower petals, jumped feet first into the waters of the reservoir.

After that act of homage and exorcism, Skunk in a Funk emerged as fresh and moist as a daisy, and Delfín helped her out of the water.

Off to one side of the bridge, more than two dozen teenagers had witnessed this spectacle. The two queens, redolent of jasmine flower, approached the delicious bouquet of multicolored adolescence, and in less than three minutes’ time they had all retired to an abandoned picnic pavilion where the teenagers, driven to a frenzy by the fragrance of the flowers and Skunk in a Funk’s tears, made mad love to them till midnight.

Along toward dawn, the two queens (fragrant, flushed, and ethereal) left Lenin Park. Each of them carried a long stalk that ended in a splendid-looking jasmine flower. Swiftly they swished toward the Cementerio Colón, where they laid the flowers on Lezama’s still-fresh grave.

That Miche is quite an accomplished muchacha, whether cha-cha-ing a cha-cha or chomping pork chops or launching a coffee shop or just shopping for the cheapest shipping charges to Chicago. But secretly, she’s a chippy—she’s got the itchiest britches in the Michigan vicinity. When the itch hits her, she scratches her snatch, unlatches the back hatch of her hatchback, and with a catch in her voice yells Pancho! Pancho! And Pancho chows down.

But the last time Pancho and Miche matched passions in the back of her hatchback—ouch! Secret chippy Miche
loves
to get her snatch’s itch scratched, but the last time she latched onto Pancho to scratch it, she got a nasty rash.

For E. Michelson