The Color of Summer: or The New Garden of Earthly Delights (56 page)

Throughout Fifo’s party, Skunk in a Funk had taken part in the festivities with real abandon, though also with wisdom and cunning. She intrigued, entertained, enchanted; her conversation ranged from the most trivial (a play on words, for example) to the most transcendental (a proof of the existence of the Devil). But which one was it that was there that night? Which one was it that now, shimmying and shaking and dancing through the delirious Carnival, was looking for Tatica so she could kill him? Was it Skunk in a Funk, the screaming queen? Was it Gabriel, the farm boy, the country bumpkin from the hills of Holguín? Was it Reinaldo, the ill-fated and forever luckless writer? We cannot be sure which of the three was there that night representing the other doubles who, inspired by the example of Ñica, had fled the country years earlier across the Strait of Florida. But whichever one it was, s/he embodied all the absent ones to perfection. So well, in fact, that however long, however deeply we have investigated, we have not been able to discover which one it was who attended the Carnival festivities in representation of his/her
true and authentic
doubles. Who was Skunk in a Funk actually representing? Who was she being represented by?

Lulled by Liberace’s “Clair de lune,” Lala, Lapique’s loyal ally, a lusty lollapalooza of a lass, was lolling languorously on her chaise longue in a long lovelorn lethargy when, looking up, she saw Lilliputian libertine Lulu, whose licorice lollipop she began to lustily lick.

How long did Lala lustily lick Lilliputian Lulu’s licorice lollipop?

And did the Lilliputian libertine Lulu like having her lollipop licked by Lala the lecherous lollapalooza? Loved it!

For Lala the lollapalooza

For many years, all the queens on the Island, including those who were apparently on Fifo’s side (or even his informants), had gleefully whispered among themselves that Bloodthirsty Shark, like all sharks, was a top. Many of the queens who had dived down and gnawed away at the Island’s undermooring had seen how the male gnawers who were caught by Bloodthirsty Shark or the other, smaller sharks would not only be torn to pieces by those creatures but also cruelly raped.

One day, a group of imprisoned ogresses sitting on the side of a dam in a concentration camp formed a committee and decided that the only way to eliminate Bloodthirsty Shark was through love. Yes, one of the most beautiful queens on the Island had to be trained in the art of seduction so he could seduce Bloodthirsty Shark. The choice fell on Miss Mayoya. This mulatto-skinned beauty seemed to have discovered the secret of eternal youth; his neck was long and perfect, her mouth was ripe and sensual, his eyes were green, and her hair fell in ringlets as gleaming as her eyes. And so the wisest queens on Fifo’s staff—queens such as Ho’ Guerra, Capitán Pachuca, Miss Güé Güevavara—spent hours, days, weeks instructing the beautiful fairy in the art of seducing sharks. And because they were all high officials in the regime, these queens could bring back from Paris all the perfume, sex oils, makeup, shampoo, and hair spray imaginable to make Mayoya even more irresistible to the carnivorous sea creature. Mayoya, perfectly oiled, perfumed, and dressed in nothing but a sequined bikini (which concealed a silver dagger), would spend long hours on a rock beside the ocean, dancing, swaying his hips, and generally enticing Bloodthirsty Shark, who would swim back and forth, snorting, before the glistening beauty on the beach. It was not long before Bloodthirsty Shark began to court, or at least strut his stuff for, Mayoya, who went on dancing on her rock beside the sea, the long silver dagger at his waist. Bloodthirsty Shark would emerge from the bottom of the sea and begin to frolic about on the surface. At that, the queen would swing his hips even more seductively, toss her ringleted hair, and neigh as beguilingly as she could. The great ocean creature would swim on its back, shoot up out of the water like a jet-propelled missile, touch the clouds, and in a tumult of spray dive straight down into the water again, directly before the dancing queen. Clearly, Bloodthirsty Shark had fallen in love with Mayoya. Oh, but something unplanned had happened—the dishy Mayoya had fallen in love with the great shark, too. . . . And yet, being a family-values kind of queen, she always set principles before passion. The shark, however, had been trained by Fifo, who had
no
principles, and within the most rigid antifaggot upbringing, and though it would often screw a male victim (who would die a double death, of pleasure and shark bite simultaneously), its first obligation, as we have seen, was
to kill the traitor.
A bloodthirsty shark can never forgive a traitor, much less a faggot whose very nature it was to be a
double
traitor. That was the implacable law in which the shark had been brought up—not only by Fifo but also by Isabel Monal and all the other distinguished professors of dialectical materialism. Clearly, then, between the love the shark felt for Mayoya and its conscience, there yawned an unbridgeable chasm. And above that yawning chasm the desperate shark, member erect, would dance. . . .

And as for Miss Mayoya, he had always demanded the biggest piece of meat in existence—indeed a unique piece of meat (which was why the silly thing was actually still a virgin)—and so he believed that in the bearing, grace, and proportions (!) of Bloodthirsty Shark he had at last discovered the object of his unfulfilled rectal longings. And yet that same shark was the symbol of the repression that had prevented her and everyone else on the Island from ever finding fulfillment. And so between Mayoya and Bloodthirsty Shark there
also
lay a gulf of grave moral principle. . . . Still, to be swept off her feet by that marine
beast,
to feel—ohmigod—that monstrous carnivore wrap her in its fins, carry her to the bottom of the sea, penetrate her in one swift terrible thrust, and then in a transport of ecstasy and glory, crowned with seashells, sea urchins, and jellyfish, fly with her up to the very clouds—it would be
heaven
. . . . And so, torn between principle and love, the queen would weep as she danced upon her seaside boulder, and Bloodthirsty Shark, its face unmistakably macho-tough yet suddenly tragic, perhaps even filled with remorse, would dance in lustful pirouettes before the forbidden faggot.

This romance had been contained, controlled, and kept virtually in secret until the day that Mayoya saw, up close—up
very
close, separated by only the plate-glass wall of the aquarium—the unbelievable dimensions of Bloodthirsty Shark’s tool. The poor fairy could bear it no longer—he gave a cry that nobody heard (since everyone was being raped by the primates) and ran madly from the catacomb palace. He traversed the broad lawns, crossed the Malecón, vaulted the crowd of Pissed Disinvitees, ripped off all her gorgeous clothes (except for the sequin-spangled bikini), and, dagger at her waist, plunged into the sea. He was going to meet his lover, who meantime was soaring through the waters near the Presidential Palace.

“Now, at last, divine justice shall be done,” intoned Padre Gastaluz, seeing the faggot madly run into the sea, dagger at his waist. And the entire group of Disappointees fell to their knees upon the rocks.

“Now, my dear, what is going to happen is that that shark creature is going to rip her to shreds, unless of course a miracle should occur,” said the King of Romania, kissing an image of the Black Virgin of Kraków and watching Bloodthirsty Shark swim toward Miss Mayoya.

“She’s going to kill Bloodthirsty Shark,” were the words of Sakuntala la Mala and the head of the Italian Communist Party, in unison.

Alongside the palace, near the shore, and in full sight of the Nobodies, the long-awaited meeting at last occurred. Mayoya, opening her arms, embraced the potent phallus of Bloodthirsty Shark—a phallus which emerged from the shark’s sleek body like a black periscope—as the sea creature beat its fins in pleasure. In a fit of ecstasy, Mayoya planted kisses along the whole splendid length of it. The shark, propelling itself with its powerful tail, sailed with the queen high into the air as it kissed her and with its magnificent teeth ripped off her sequined bikini. In the air, the queen hurled away the silver dagger, which fell into the sea, and lifting her arms high, fell backside-first upon the shark’s gigantic member. The shark, at that, performed a violent contraction and penetrated her to the hilt. Smoke issued from the queen’s mouth—boiling-hot steam produced by the shark’s sleek piston in Miss Mayoya’s ignition chamber. Mayoya, like some lascivious buoy, bobbed and floated on the surface of the waves, spitted deliriously upon the shark’s stiff member. The pleasure that the two bodies were giving and receiving was so great that powerful electrical charges flashed from them like lightning bolts or huge sputtering arrows launched toward the heavens, and these electrical discharges set off a terrible storm, which the Uninvitees on the shore, in their anxiety over the outcome of the sexual combat, faced with uncommon bravery as they clung to the rocks along the beach. When the storm clouds cleared, they could once more watch the lustful sport that was still going on out at sea—and, disappointed and dejected by this new disillusionment, plot a new route to vengeance. But shark and fairy, oblivious to all dangers (which were considerable), were intent only upon their savagely licentious encounter—which, by the way, was now taking place under serene and cloudless skies. Mayoya walked, arms spread, upon the water and then suddenly, opening her sensual mouth, dived onto and deep-throated Bloodthirsty Shark’s black rod. Bloodthirsty Shark, rising higher and higher out of the blue ocean with Mayoya in its jaws, began to tickle him with its many rows of sparkling teeth. And so, never touching the waves, and before the terrified eyes of Deaconess Marina and Bishop O’Condom, fairy and shark performed a coupling so high in the air that it seemed to be freed from the laws of gravity. Mayoya then took the shark’s pole with a tremendous howl of laughter and stuck her head in the beast’s jaws—the beast, still more aroused, and without withdrawing its member from the little fairy, leapt from wave to wave, giving off a smell of male sex hormone so strong that it polluted those waters for all eternity (which is why you always see so many maricones having sex on that beach—it’s the pheromaricones, I mean pheromoans, I mean pheromones) and even stimulated the sea cucumbers, who awoke from their thousand-year sleep. . . . That unparalleled member even temporarily blocked the path of the Gulf Stream, which, breaking loose at last, gave an enormous heave and threw Ernest Hemingway (who’d been resuscitated to attend Fifo’s party) all the way to Greenland, where, seeing himself naked and with such a little tiny dick, he hanged himself with one of his fairy feathers. And for several minutes more the priapic sleek black shark and fiery fairy writhed in one ultimate sexual spasm, emitting shrieks, fish scales, streams of hot and cold semen, muffled giggles, and stunning flutters of the fins. Then, meshed into one great whirlpool of lust, they spiraled downward into the depths of the waters, setting off a waterspout that even today is the bane of sailors around the world. Then, like an erotic meteor scuttling across the ocean floor and setting off undersea earthquakes, shark and fairy, still carnally coupled, came at last to the plate-glass wall of the underwater Aquarium Theater in Fifo’s palace. There the copulation was in full flower when Fifo and his entourage burst into the hall.

We should note here, I think, that never in the entire long history of screwing had such a screw been seen—or would ever be seen again. There in the great underground fishbowl, the shark and the fairy writhed, leaped, twined, twisted, embraced, nibbled, bubbled with pleasure, and unleashed deafening underwater thunder. . . . Fifo was red with rage. This was not only an emotional blow, but a moral blow as well—emotional because he had always secretly been in love with that shark (as he had once been with a very special cow); moral, because the sex he was seeing was an act of high treason, an act of ideological betrayal committed, to make matters worse, before his VIP guests—first ladies, ministers, attorneys general, kings, drug traffickers, magnates, henchmen and flunkies, poetesses, and other well-educated whores.

And what, in the meantime, were those VIP guests doing as they contemplated the spectacle from their velvet seats? The only thing one
can
do, my dear—they were all sitting there jerking off.

Fifo, who never once gave any sign of losing his composure, first gave secret orders that Bloodthirsty Shark was to be annihilated by any means necessary and then, in a loud voice, ordered his midgets to release the monkeys again. But after the titanic bout of lovemaking that they had just gone through with all the guests, the monkeys acted more like zombies than lecherous simians, and were able to do little more than drape themselves over the aroused bodies of the guests. The only person who managed to stimulate her primate partner was Mother Teresa, who finally worked up an erection in a gigantic orangutan by whispering a stream of Latin in its ear. The other guests had to make out the best they could. The Prime Minister of India, for example, unwound the wrappings from the mummy of his mother (whom he himself had killed) and began to mount her while he was being mounted by several of his muscular escorts, each wearing a costume of his home province.

Suddenly, a sleek frogman (dispatched by the diligent midgets) swam into the waters of the aquarium and fired off a harpoon at Bloodthirsty Shark. Seeing the deadly lance, Mayoya made a desperate effort—the effort that can be inspired only by love—and pulled Bloodthirsty Shark, still harpooning
her,
out of the way just in the nick of time. But the hail of deadly harpoons continued, and then there came a depth charge so powerful that Bloodthirsty Shark (taking care that nothing happen to his beloved Mayoya, whom he never ceased embracing) was thrown against the glass wall of the Aquarium Theater. So hard did Bloodthirsty Shark crash into the glass that it shattered into a million pieces—and a wall of water exploded into the auditorium. Terrified, the audience, their clothes soaked through, began to flee the mini-tsunami, with the monkeys right behind (though many of them were so exhausted that they drowned). Water flooded not only the Aquarium Theater but the whole catacomb palace, despite the most diligent efforts of the diligent midgets, who were desperately stopping up cracks and closing air locks.