The Color of Summer: or The New Garden of Earthly Delights (59 page)

What would you say, my dear, if I told you that Teodoro Tampon had invented a fruit milkshake that contained no fruit or milk? It was this strange mixture of egg white, seawater, and ashes that some people claimed was what
really
killed Teodoro’s mother. . . . Then there was the time that Teodoro (obviously under the influence of Clara) made fake coins out of bottle caps off Son soft drinks. These bottle caps, hammered into shape, would sometimes fool the coin-counter on the bus so you could ride for free. Of course if one of them happened not to, and the trick was discovered (“robbery of the People”), you had to run for your life. . . . The famous bounce-back glass display window had also been Teodoro’s invention. This was a special piece of plate glass installed in a store window, and when a thief would throw a rock at it to break in, the rock would bounce back, hit the thief in the head, and knock him out. That way, the criminal would be brought to justice by the same instrument with which he’d committed the crime. (Teodoro
loved
poetic justice.) The invention was not a bad one, but it was expensive—not to mention that there was nothing worth protecting in any store window in Havana. Finally Clara pressured Teodoro to sign over the patent to Fifo, who sold it to a French jeweler. Today this jeweler is one of the wealthiest men in the world, has an enormous castle, and rides around on horseback while his wife, a very refined lady, makes love to the domestic staff and the eye-popping black doormen. They say that the sale of the patent brought Fifo a huge fortune (
another
huge fortune) and that he became known throughout the world as not only a shrewd businessman but also an inventor.

Another of Teodoro’s inventions was plastic litter bags (so to speak) for the backsides of the blackbirds in Central Park in Havana. The idea was that by using the bags, these birds, whose singing Teodoro loved, wouldn’t always be shitting on the passersby at nightfall when the birds congregated to sing awhile and then settle in to sleep in the park’s wonderful old bay laurel trees. But this invention was also too expensive for the government to use—and the government, of course, was the only possible purchaser. Thousands of tiny black polyethylene bags would be needed, and when any were to be found they were immediately requisitioned, at Fifo’s behest, for use with the coffee plant seedlings that were transported from nurseries to be planted all around Havana. Finally those singing blackbirds, the only consolation in Teodoro’s entire life, were exterminated one by one by the soldiers of the Territorial Militia. (That was the other blow from which Teodoro could never recover.)

Perhaps in order to entertain himself with something and not go out of his mind, Teodoro was currently working very hard on a portable smoke-generating machine. When it was completed, Teodoro would be able to throw a switch and fill the entire Payrot Theater with clouds of billowing black smoke. For ten straight years, you see, the Payrot had been showing
King Kong,
but the film drew such crowds that neither Teodoro nor Clara nor Skunk in a Funk could bear to even
think
about standing in the lines. So with the smoke machine and its clouds of smoke, Teodoro, Clara, all their children, and Skunk in a Funk (or so she was promised) would be able to sneak in without standing in line or paying. And once they were inside, with the lights out, who would ever catch them? That was Teodoro’s newest dream, his newest plan, and it was this dream that was currently keeping him from throwing himself into the ocean. But by now Skunk in a Funk knew this plan down to the tiniest detail, because every time Teodoro came to visit her and tell his story of woe (and borrow the swim fins), he would bring Skunk in a Funk up to date on his new invention, which he intended to keep working on no matter where he finally wound up.

But tonight Teodoro Tampon had not run to Gabriel’s room in the Hotel Monserrate to borrow his swim fins and tell her his troubles. Tonight—breathless, panting, beating his short arms and wiggling his short neck, and in a voice of desperation—he had come to tell Reinaldo an urgent piece of news:

“Clara’s called an emergency meeting. . . . Apparently it’s really serious this time. Says we’re
lost
. . . . Told me t’tell you that you
had
to come. . . . She’s waiting.”

And without any other explanation, Teodoro Tampon rolled downstairs so swiftly and so arrow-straight that Skunk in a Funk realized that obviously she
had
to attend that meeting.

To the echoing tick of the tacky cuckoo clock, the cop, a prick in mock crocodile moccasins with checked socks, dropped the ocarina he liked to suck, coughed, hacked, hawked up a wad, spat, slicked back his locks, kicked a rock, ducked a mock rocket attack, and, stoking up a rock of crack coke, cried, “Fuck! What luck! I asked for smack!”

For Dulce María Leynaz

Although Skunk in a Funk (who
loved
this cloak-and-dagger stuff) took off like lightning for Clara Mortera’s room, by the time he got there many of the others that Clara had invited had already arrived. Amazingly, even Teodoro Tampon (who must have
flown
) was back already—though when he opened the door to the Skunk his droopy, sluggish movements were the very picture of dejection.

In the middle of the room, sitting in a big armchair, Clara Mortera held court in a long white dress that covered her from ankles to throat. She was surrounded by her guests, an extraordinary spectrum of people, who were sitting cross-legged on the floor, perched on any surface they could find, or standing about the best they could.

Among those present were Clara’s great-grandparents from the country, several Cuban and foreign sailors, and Misses Reinaldo Slam-bam-thank-you-man and Dario Mala, two queens lugging shopping bags containing hard-boiled eggs and some kind of black crackers and escorted by two hoodlums of the worst sort—since, as the two fairies were fond of saying, they liked to travel with provisions for both the mouth and the backside. Naturally Odoriferous Gunk was there, though without his dying mother. There was also a Buddhist bonze wearing a full-length robe made of the finest silk and with his head totally shaved except for a long braid that sprouted from the crown of his head and fell to below his shoulders. The bonze had been on the Island for several months now, and he was hoping that after he’d filled out endless forms and trekked endlessly from one office to another, he’d be invited by Fifo to the Grand Fiesta. He was also trying to win proselytes to Buddha, so he was planning a meditation-march on the night of the Carnival. Clara, who naturally intended to get her hands on the magnificent robe the bonze was wearing, had built up his hopes for converting her, though the truth was, she planned to denounce him to Fifo once she had mugged and stripped him.

Also present was Clara’s mother, with a tragic expression on her face.

Suddenly someone was banging furiously at the room’s only door. Teodoro, at a sharp nod from Clara, opened it, though his fear was evident.

“Oh, it’s
her
 . . .” Sakuntala la Mala sneered to Coco Salas.

And we must confess that the diabolic horse-faced fairy was right in calling the potbellied, dewlapped man who had just made his entrance “her.” Yes,
her,
because—despite the tall leather boots with iron spurs, cowboy blue jeans, khaki work shirt, and wide-brimmed hat; and despite the affectedly baritone voice, the gold bracelet, and the heavy gold chain across the hairy chest—everyone recognized in that chubby, not-quite-human-looking rotundity the person of Miguel Barniz. . . . I mean, really, girl,
anybody
could see that this was a faggot of the
worst
kind—plus, who was with her but that mean-looking dyke Nancy Mojón.

“And now that the Holy Father is here . . .” whispered Skunk in a Funk to Tomasito the Goya-Girl and Renecito Cifuentes.

Sitting next to them, and wrapped in a heavy shawl (though the heat was terrible), was Ramón Sernada (a.k.a. the Ogress). The Ogress was shivering and hugging himself, and every pustule on her body was suppurating—and when Miguel Barniz came in, she almost
popped.
But with the royal welcome extended to the inquisitor by Clara, the guests returned to what they’d been doing and even Sernada sank into a sort of shivering flutter. Overshadowing Sernada in every sense of the word was a swarm of art dealers, special-forces police agents unknown to the other police officers who were present, working-class hunks, straights who made a living as gigolos to faggots, licensed hookers, members of Fifo’s inner circle, conspirators, fishermen, neighborhood kids, and a dozen or so representatives of sinister and/or patriotic organizations.

But one must in all honesty say that putting all of
those
personages in the shade, in terms of brilliance and evil, goodness and cunning, grandeur, sensitivity, and naiveté, was (in addition, of course, to Skunk in a Funk) the Super Weird Sister or Big Weird (as he himself sometimes referred to himself)—Delfín Proust, a.k.a. la Reine des Araignées, who was back at the back of the room, tied hand and foot to an iron bar attached to the wall. Delfin was there as a hostage to himself (or rather to his work), and as prisoner perhaps for life. And for good reason . . .

For several months now, Delfín Proust had been at work on his autobiography, snatches of which he would read to people when he went to their houses to visit. But these autobiographical memoirs were of a
very
shifting and changeable nature. For instance—when Delfín Proust was invited by Paula Amanda (a.k.a. Luisa Fernanda) to read an excerpt from his work-in-progress at her place, he would suppress all the offensive (and therefore objective) pages that he’d written about that particular witch and replace them with pages that portrayed Paula Amanda as the goddess of poetry, goodness, and political genius. Then, the reading done, he would put the real pages back in and go off to read in other
salons.
He had written the heads and tails, the pros and cons, the pluses and minuses of every person mentioned in his autobiography. And when he read, he would read the version best suited to the circumstances.

If, for example, he was at the home of one of Skunk in a Funk’s enemies (Coco Salas, for instance), Delfín would read the most virulent diatribes against Reinaldo. If he was doing a reading at Reinaldo’s house, he would read in great detail how Coco Salas had been beaten almost to death by some fag-rollers in Old Havana who’d mugged him for the camera that Halisia brought him from Monte Carlo. The beating they’d given Coco was so terrible (Delfín read) that the doctors had had to give him a platinum throat, and now he couldn’t suck cock any more. “The worst misfortune that could befall her,” La Reine des Araignées concluded the chapter against Coco. And also in Skunk in a Funk’s house Delfín had read a long apologia for Reinaldo, which compared him to José Martí, the greatest of Cuban patriot-poets. “He is without question the foremost genius of our generation, our Apostle, the only man capable of destroying himself through passion, our defining figure.” That was the last line of the apologia. And Skunk in a Funk, filled with sadness, saw that it was all true. But the truth was, if La Reine des Araignées had read the pages that insulted and mocked Reinaldo, Reinaldo would have seen that
that
was all true, as well.

So anyway, to make a long story short, what had happened was that when Clara found out that Delfín had these chameleon-like memoirs which one day said terrible things about her and another day praised her to the skies, she invited Delfín Proust over for a cup of Russian tea. And when he came, she enlisted Teodoro, her numerous children, and the bodega man down on the corner to help her tie Delfín up, and she told him that he’d stay there until he revealed where he’d hidden his memoirs. . . .

Some of the guests tonight, taking pity on him, went over to Delfín Proust and slipped a moist cracker into his mouth, or even gave him a sip of watery coffee and a caramel.

According to Clara, who was constantly consulting a long list, a number of personages had still not arrived, among them Urania Bicha, Poncito, the cultural attaché of the Jamaican embassy, the Divine Malign, a dealer in primitive paintings from Alturas de Chabón in the Dominican Republic. . . . And at that point, who should arrive but the cunning Mahoma, Chug-a-Lug, a political refugee from Panama, a graduate from Columbia University in New York on the arm of Casandra Levinson, and a dozen or so hunky tops and VIP fairies.

As the guests finished arriving, Skunk in a Funk, tightrope-walking through the wall-to-wall sea of people, decided to have another look at some of Clara’s paintings. The one she loved most was of an enchanted forest, filled with immense lianas and violent jungle leaves.

That particular painting radiated a vitality and a power that were almost otherworldly. Every flower blossomed into a strange pair of scissors endlessly opening and closing. The background of the painting was an infinite world of hallucinatory perspectives and barking birds. Filled with wonder at its skill, Skunk in a Funk minutely studied the masterpiece, but she was careful not to touch the canvas or even get too close to it; many of those who did had injured themselves on the leaves and flowers. Ramón Sernada, who had once been director of a museum and a dealer in fakes, confessed to his intimates (so we can’t reproduce his exact words here) that he had gotten AIDS from a prick from one of Clara’s paintings. And although that is
extremely
doubtful, it was true that Clara received a small commission or a government pardon every time she transmitted AIDS to someone in the general population.

Skunk in a Funk continued exploring that fantastic picture gallery. Naturally she stopped to marvel at the
Portrait of Karilda Olivar Lubricious,
an unfinished masterwork that we will be mentioning in a short while, in the chapter titled “The Death of Virgilio Piñera.” But her moment of true ecstasy came when she was standing before the immense canvas entitled
Homage to Luisa Pérez de Zambrana.
This painting, like all extraordinary things in this world, had the wondrous ability to hint at depths of mystery, at facet after facet of significance. Once one had seen that painting, it was simply impossible not to return to it again.

Like all great works of art, it beggared explanation, and it also, of course, eluded all attempts to grasp it whole; nor did it allow of rational, or any single, interpretation. Superficially, it was the portrait of a poet, a woman who had actually lived—a woman who was young, olive-skinned, sitting under a tree with her hair pulled back, and with a white flower (or perhaps a butterfly) in her hair. This lovely young poet was holding a book, though she was not reading it—she was looking outward at the spectator of the painting. To Skunk in a Funk, this meant that all the terrible truth the book contained was useless, that there was something more terrible still that lay beneath the first discovery, and beneath that, things still more terrible.

The problem was that from that woman—her eyes, her hands, her hair, her entire figure, and the painting that surrounded her—there emanated a mystery so total, so desolate, and yet so resigned, that it was outside time. That face was the outward symbol of the heart of a woman who had seen her children, still in childhood, die, and then seen her husband die as well. The work was touched with an infinite grief, as terrible as the resignation that also filled it. Its subject was a woman who came from the Night and had known its minute terror. One could say that it was the sum of all misfortunes, all calamities, concentrated in one horrific, stoic act of wisdom.

That woman, that painting, was not a painting; it was a spell, an awesome and irrepeatable force that could have been born only out of an ecstasy of genius and madness. It was enigma and consolation; it was faith in the belief that come what may, life does still have meaning; and it was absolute despair. It was concentrated diabolism and goodness that struck the person who looked upon it dumb—and then made him weep.

Perhaps no painting but the
Mona Lisa
itself could compare with that portrait hanging in a dim corner of Clara’s stifling hovel. The portrait, in this room that
breathed
defeat, was a triumphant, pathetic, and terrifying cry of defiance.

The amazing thing was that the brilliant painter’s room was crammed
full
of wonderful paintings—they covered the walls and even the high colonial ceiling. But Skunk in a Funk, entranced, and temporarily oblivious to all the world’s horrors—especially the horror of being alive—could not tear himself from the portrait of Luisa Pérez de Zambrana. To look upon that painting was a privilege that transformed any pain, any grief, any calamity.

But then Clara told Teodoro to lock the door and slide the crossbar into place—everyone had finally arrived. And she began to speak to the gathered guests.

“My children,” she said, although among her guests were several of her former fathers- and mothers-in-law and even her great-grandfather, “you know that all my life I have been a whore. You know the dangers I have had to face in the practice of my profession. But thanks to that profession I have survived in every sense of the word—I have helped you all, I have supported an enormous family, and I have been able to work on my paintings. But above all, I have lived independently and freely, practicing the only profession that has still not been prostituted: i.e., prostitution. This wonderful calling has allowed me to be the captain of this household and, even more importantly perhaps, the captain of my own life. But now, something terrible has happened to me. My breasts have fallen. Look!”