The Color of Summer: or The New Garden of Earthly Delights (40 page)

Odoriferous Gunk had just struggled up the steep stairway of the apartment house where Clara Mortera lived in a tiny room with all her children. He was one of those who had been invited to the urgent meeting that Clara Mortera had called for that afternoon. But since Odoriferous Gunk had brought along her dying mother, the famous painter firmly, but with a great show of unctuous affection, refused to let her in.

“No, my dear. Your mother cannot, absolutely cannot, attend this meeting. What I have to say is of the utmost gravity, and I fear for her life. And I don’t want any problems with the chairwoman of the Watchdog Committee. I’ll see you later.”

And so Odoriferous Gunk had to struggle down the steep, broad stairway once again, carrying not only her mother but also her mother’s collapsible pup tent and all the medications and appurtenances that a pathetic, sick old lady entails.

In Havana Park, not far from Clara’s house, Odie set up the tent, hung a hammock, and helped her mother into it—as her mother began softly whimpering and moaning in pain.

The queen sat at the door of the tent waiting for her mother to fall asleep so she could go back to Clara’s room. There was no way she was going to miss that meeting.

The story of Odoriferous Gunk and her dying mother (whom Odoriferous Gunk carried around on her back) is long and, of course, despicable.

I’ll just summarize it for you.

As a young (though hideous) queen, Odoriferous Gunk lived in the city of Trinidad in a large residence dating from colonial times; the house had been in her family for generations. When Odie’s father realized that his son was such an in-your-face fairy that he was the laughingstock of all of Trinidad (which for the father was the center of the world), he fled the country in a motorboat that he launched from the southern Cuba port of Casilda. After much struggle, and having had to sail around the entire Island ringed with sharks, he at last reached the United States, and the first thing he saw in the Miami
Herald
(which Fifo edited long-distance from Cuba) was a huge photograph of his son alongside an article in which Odoriferous Gunk was talking about the progress the Anglican Church had made in Cuba. That terrible photo was exhibited in almost every church in Miami, and even at guarapo stands and smaller shopping centers. Unable to bear such a stigma any longer (he had already been telephoned by a radio station, La Cubanísima, and asked to do an interview on his son), Odie’s father grabbed a butcher knife and stood in front of the biggest Episcopal church in southern Florida and stabbed himself in the chest seventeen times.

At that, Odoriferous Gunk swathed herself in black from head to toe and became the leading light in the Anglican Church in his hometown. Fifo had already catapulted him onto the first page of the Miami
Herald,
where he’d appeared in a lovely photo, and this photo, alongside one of Queen Elizabeth of England at her coronation, hung in the great dining room of the colonial mansion in the house in Trinidad. Under those photos, Odie, surrounded by the most flaming queens in Trinidad, served tea every afternoon at five.

Odie’s mother, stricken with grief at her husband’s abandonment of her, his violent death, and the constant racket in that house that was always full of fairies dressed in black, caught cancer.

The poor woman was sent to the public hospital in Trinidad. While she underwent terrible chemotherapy treatments, Odie sold almost everything in the house. The truth was, he never expected his mother to come out of the hospital alive. But in two months or so his mother was released, and she returned, gravely ill, to an empty house that contained only a tea set, a little tea table, several chairs, and (but my dear, how could you doubt it?) the photos of Queen Elizabeth and Odoriferous Gunk. The old lady couldn’t even have a drink of ice water, because her son had sold the refrigerator. The poor soul, in constant pain, went every afternoon to the Catholic Church and made her confession to the priest. Her words always ended with muted weeping.

“My son has deprived me of cold water, father, just when my soul was bound for the other side.”

People were outraged at Odie’s heartless attitude, and many complained loudly; the priest even called him to account. Odie, wearing black gloves and a long jacket with black bellows-gored pockets over which she threw a lovely black cape, promised to somehow solve the problem of ice water. Within a few weeks she arrived home to the unfurnished mansion with a stone water jug and water filter, the kind people used to use out in the country. But this water jug made no improvement in her mother’s health; in fact, her mother had to be taken to the hospital again. Now, said the doctors, the poor lady’s days were truly numbered.

While the mother lay dying in the hospital, Odoriferous Gunk, whose nickname was now famous for miles around because of the English toilet waters she sprinkled over her filthy, black, heavy clothes, moved into the See of the Episcopal Church in Havana as a seminary student. There she met a very professional and well-known hoodlum who claimed descent from the family of Isabel de Bobadilla, and he convinced Odie to sell her mother’s house and go off with him to live in Varadero. And within minutes, the illegal sale was done and almost all the money squandered.

In a few weeks, when the dying mother returned to her house, there was no house to return to. Odie was still in Varadero with the descendant of Isabel de Bobadilla and the large portrait of Queen Elizabeth. The life she was living in Varadero was so scandalous and extravagant that soon, through the good offices of Coco Salas, the news reached Trinidad. As the mother breathed her last, she called the entire city of Trinidad to a meeting at the Iznaga Tower. With terrible pain and effort she climbed to the top of the tower and from that height addressed the multitude. She told them of the terrible trick that had been played on her, the way she’d been swindled of her own house, and said her son was
possessed by the devil.
As irrefutable proof, the mother showed them the photo of her son. That was enough to convince the crowd that all this was, indeed, the work of Satan. Then and there, a crusade was organized against the apostate. Waving clubs and sticks all the Trinidadians, even the queens who used to have tea with Odie, marched to Varadero, intending to bring the renegade queen to reason and make him accept his responsibilities as a son. This crusade has been immortalized as “the Cuban struggle against the devil,” in a book written by Fernando Ortiz. . . . As their pursuers pursued them, Odie and the descendant of Isabel de Bobadilla fled across the province of Matanzas and flung themselves into the ocean on a frail little single-masted sailboat, hoping to sail to the island of Grand Cayman, which was under the British crown. All the treasure that remained to them was the water jug full of drinking water and the portrait of Queen Elizabeth. Their pursuers, however, hotly pursuing the fugitives, at last in fact caught up with them, and the fugitives were forced to surrender. Soaked to the skin and starving, they were towed to shore by their intrepid pursuers and a platoon of enraged sharks that Odie kept at bay by showing them the portrait of the queen. . . . When they reached the coast, the dying mother was waiting for them, lying on a stretcher. That bald, cadaverous, suffering figure was the first thing the son saw as he leaped onto land. And he realized that it was impossible for him ever to be separated from her again, that that dying mother (who never seemed to just get it over with and die) was his own fate, his own long bout of dying, and that wherever he went from that day forward, he would have to carry her with him and take care of her. And besides—there was the entire bellicose population of Trinidad, the most bloodthirsty queens in Cuba, and the entire army of Occidente province to see that Odoriferous Gunk met his responsibilities as a son.

But just the same, even though Odie signed all the maternal IOUs and got a tent for the two of them, he could not remain in Trinidad, because the people there were calling for his head. And so with her dying mother she set out for Havana, stopping every two miles to set up the pup tent and attend the poor lady
in extremis.
In Havana, the Party Committee of the province (who knew there was a housing shortage all over the Island) gave Odoriferous Gunk special permission to set up his tent in any vacant lot or park or on any flat roof in Havana. He was even allowed to go out into the country, where the pure air might mitigate his mother’s suffering. But Odie flatly rejected that possibility—he’d rejoined the Episcopal Church in Havana, and besides, he wanted to get his hands on that descendant of Isabel de Bobadilla.

And now, waiting for his mother’s pain to lessen so he can go off to Clara Mortera’s room, Odie is thinking with great pleasure of the great liturgy, with organ music, that is to take place in the Episcopal church, where she herself, in a
wonderful
purple robe, will be carrying one of the holy palliums.

The party in Fifo’s great underground palace was coming now to its climax. The state dinner was over, at which the resurrection of Julián del Casal, José María Heredia, Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, José Lezama Lima, and other celebrities had taken place (the same method that the Holy Father had used to revive Aurélico Cortés had been employed now by Oscar Horcayés to resurrect these glories of Cuban culture, and to the same effect); three hundred dancers from all over the world had danced three hundred native dances of their respective countries; five hundred pesky Rodents had been strangled by five hundred muscular midgets; Skunk in a Funk had read her Thirty Truculent Tongue Twisters; and PornoPop, The Only Remaining Go-Go Fairy Queen in Cuba, who couldn’t wait for the big conference to start, had recited her brilliant PornoPop Poetry. Halisia had danced
Giselle,
and then, tireless, offered to dance it again. And now, in the midst of the most exquisite liqueurs and the most diligently attentive midgets, Fifo announced that the Crucifuckingfixion was about to begin.

He called for a volunteer to be crucifuckingfied. Hundred of guests raised their hands. They knew that being crucifuckingfied was a pleasure beyond all other pleasures, for it meant being impaled on thousands of enormous, glistening, hard, erect phalluses, all at once. Men, women, fairies, and queens jumped up and down deliriously at the idea, madly waving their hands in the air, in hopes that Fifo would choose them. Above the clamor of voices one could clearly hear the shrieks of the cunning Mahoma, the King of Syria, Macumeco, Bibi the Bimbo, the latest Miss Universe, Arthur Lumska, and Monsignor Sacchi, who was trying to get Fifo to look his way by blowing a cornet that he’d tied to his enormous rosary (from which there was also hanging a hammer and sickle and a Nazi swastika). At last, Fifo (who was not going to play favorites in
this
particular event) announced that the honor of being crucifuckingfied was to go to Yasir Arafat. And to moans of disappointment from everyone in the room, the head of the Panamanian Liberation Movement moved triumphantly toward the wall where he was to be crucifuckingfied, the midgets stripping his clothes from him as he advanced. Soon, naked, he stood with his back to the room, against the Wall of Crucifuckingfixion.

He was asked to spread his arms and legs as far apart as he could; then his wrists and ankles were bound to strong rings attached to the wall. Immediately, two hundred midgets carrying brushes and cans of red paint approached the soon-to-be-victim’s body and began painting bull’s-eyes on his asscheeks, legs, ankle, throat, triple chin, ass, ears. . . . There was not a single part of that voluminous body that some scurrying midget didn’t get to and cover with red bull’s-eyes. When this important preliminary had been accomplished, the midgets retired and the ceremony
per se
began.

From one end of the hall, more than a hundred men drawn from every known race on earth stepped forward. They were totally naked, and their enormous members were fully erect. A unanimous sigh resounded throughout the palace as those magnificent ephebes strode forward, masculinities at the ready, for their encounter with Arafat. A Congolese Negro, arriving before his fellow attackers, penetrated the Leader’s anus; the phallus belonging to an immense Mongol inserted itself into a hand; an American lad from Ohio buried his vigorous rosy member in one buttock; a potent Dominican shoved his lusty lance into one foot while a Russian buried his member in one knee and an Israeli penetrated his neck. Amidst sighs of envy from the entire audience, the brawny young men went on penetrating Arafat’s body, while the captive himself received those thorns of flesh with all the fervor of a Christian of the catacombs, and at each penetration sent forth a howl of glory.

Oh, the crucifuckingfixion was going exceptionally well. None of the well-turned ephebes had missed his mark. Each time a phallus penetrated the leader’s deformed body, Fifo applauded and the audience panted. The crucifuckingfixion was just about to reach its climactic moment when one of the most diligent of all the midgets climbed up on Fifo’s body and whispered the following news in his ear: The Condesa de Merlín had just arrived from Paris and was singing an opera in the city’s great public urinal.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” exclaimed Fifo, so furiously that Arafat stopped moaning and even the upstanding phalluses of the young men flagged a bit. “I gave specific orders for somebody to be waiting on the dock for the Condesa so we could blow her to bits with a cannonball, like SuperChelo suggested. But it’s too late for that now, I suppose. We’ll have to show her the full honors. Run! Go get her! Apologize the best you can and bring her to the palace! And now—on with the crucifuckingfixion!”

But even though the delicious ephebes grew hot once more, and continued to drill their members into the Leader, this interruption had taken some of the luster from the celebration.
What the hell,
Fifo told himself,
when Halisia dances
Giselle
again, and Albert Jünger explains the seven great categories of queenliness, this little incident will be totally forgotten.