Mona and Other Tales (12 page)

Granma
aloud. But not so loud, please, or they might think we're poking fun. The opening of the latest Soviet film,
The Great Patriotic War!
(was it this one?),
A True Man!
(or that one?),
Moscow, You Are My
Love!
(could that be it?): how marvelous, how many positive elements, a real piece of art . . . But no, not so loud, please, they may suspect, they may realize we're being sarcastic.
We Are
the Soviet Men!
Lower, still lower.
They Fought for the Homeland!
. . . Shut up, shut up.
The Ballad of the Russian Soldier!
. . . Sssh. And we applauded. At the block meetings or at the plaza, while we observed how we were being observed with a look of disdain and mistrust or with an ironic, condescending expression on their faces, since they will never be satisfied; not even when, after so much pretending, you may forget your true expression, who you are, your place in the world . . . But at this moment, half-dressed, just a few minutes after getting up, descending the improvised vertical stairs toward the improvised bathroom in that improvised cubicle, bent down between loft and “ground floor,” he stopped: suddenly he had the certainty (once more, yes, but always anew) that not only was it impossible for him to get to that box of a bathroom, but he was also unable to take a step through that junk, and moreover, he could not even move his hand from one step to the other (to go down or up his improvised stairs he needed to support himself with his hands). Thus immobilized, he looked not to the past or the future (what was that?), but at the dilapidated boards, at the spots on the wall (was it dampness?), and lastly, unexpectedly but without surprise, at his own image reflected in the mirror. To the tune of that pot again being scraped with a vengeance (coming from upstairs? downstairs? across the hallway?), he was overcome by inertia. And in that din, alienated and helpless, he felt he was finally dissolving, becoming paralyzed, disappearing, no longer pretending defeat in order to gain time, to go on, to be able later to stand on his own, but feeling clearly routed, done for. Right then—at that precise moment—there was a knock at the door. It was he, his friend, knocking as he always did before entering, though he had, of course, the keys to all the padlocks. After closing the door, he whispered in his ear: Haven't you heard? Heard what? That people are entering the Peruvian Embassy. The guards have been withdrawn since yesterday. They say the place is crammed. I'm going there. Let's go, I told him. No, you said. Wait; you have too much of a record. I'll go first and see how things are. And if it's true the place is not guarded, I'll come for you. Wait for me here. And he left. But he could not just stay there on the improvised stairs. He had something to do: get dressed, and wait. And I waited all through midday and all afternoon. Until dusk. In the hallway people were running, sliding, trying not to make noise, something never attempted before; even the radios had been turned off. I open the door, go down. In the street no one is talking, but everybody seems in communication somehow. I hurry to catch a bus toward the embassy. The bus feels more crowded than ever, something hard to imagine. Nearly all are young people. Several even dare to speak openly of their intent: to get inside the embassy quickly. Before they close it. It will surely be closed any minute now, someone next to me says. The problem is to get there, I say; then we'll see. Yes, to get there, another answers. And to stay, because anyone who leaves will get that on his record, besides getting kicked and arrested. And the passengers keep talking. Now I know why you couldn't come back. I've been stupid. I should have realized it sooner; if you didn't return, it's because it was impossible. And you probably thought that if you didn't come, I was not going to be that dumb and stay in my room. Quickly, the problem now is to get in quickly. To find you, to find you fast before you think of coming for me and get arrested, if you haven't been already. And it is all my fault, what an idiot. Quickly, quickly, for I'm sure now you're waiting for me, that you weren't trying to leave me behind, that you thought that if you couldn't come back, I would, of course, come to see what was going on . . . In packs, amid the stone-throwing, the dust and the bullets, people are getting in, we are getting in. All sorts of people. Some of them I know, some I have seen somewhere, but now we are all greeting each other with euphoria, feeling a sincere and mutual connection never experienced before, as if we were all great old friends. People and more people, from Santo Suárez, from Old Havana, from El Vedado, from all the neighborhoods, people and more people, especially young ones, jumping over the fence, dodging the blows or receiving them, running through the frenzy of bullets and the blare of police cars and loudspeakers; people jumping over in a terrorized parade, kicked and shot at, beaten with rifle butts; bodies collapsing, a woman dragging a young child by the arms, an old man using his cane to make way. A motley crowd, jumping over the gate, over the wire fence, already filling the gardens, the trees, even the roof of the embassy building. This way, in the immense cloud of dust, among hands that push and pull, amid shrieks, threats, explosions, we still manage, now in a single impervious mass, to break through the ever-tightening surveillance, and we jump, get in, and fall in with a crowd that can barely move, here, on the other side of the fence, surrounded by a circle of government cars and patrol cars that keeps growing: Alfa Romeos, Yugos, Volgas. All the elite class, the civilian and military top brass, have come in their brand-new cars to see, to try to contain, to repress, to try by any means possible to put an end to this spectacle. To top it all, they have just blocked with their cars and barriers all streets leading to the embassy, and hundreds and hundreds of soldiers dressed in civilian clothes, as everybody knows, have been deployed throughout the zone to prevent anyone from getting close to us. Now a motorcycle policeman skids violently in front of the army ring surrounding the whole embassy. “Bastards,” he shouts at us. Then he draws his gun. All of us here recede as best we can, attempting to get away from the fence. The policeman, gun in hand, reaches the fence, jumps over, and lands among us. Frantically he takes off his uniform, wraps the gun in it, and throws the bundle over the fence, to the other side, where they are. Here, inside, there is applause, shouts of “Viva.” The cordon around us triples. It's beginning to get dark. The noise we are making acquires such proportions that even the tumult and the shootings outside briefly stop. “They're going to gun us down, they're going to gun us down,” a woman suddenly screams. And the massive crowd, ourselves, again tries to retreat any way it can. The trees disappear, the roof of the building disappears. It's all a swarming anthill, people crawling, climbing, eagerly holding on to one another. Screaming. Some are falling, wounded. Panic is now generalized, because somebody is in fact shooting those inside. But that is not what I'm concerned about. I'm making my way back because I need to find you; I must find you, get to where you are, to wherever you may be. In the middle of this terrorized throng, practically without being able to move, and in the dark of night, I must find you, so that you can see that I also came, that I had the courage to get in, that I did not shrink at the challenge, that they could not completely destroy me—destroy us—and that here I am, here we are, making another attempt again. Both of us.
Alive,
still
alive
. . . That is why I don't mind stepping on this human mound that now seems to be asleep, here at the entrance of the residence. Maybe, surely, you are inside. This is the one section that I haven't yet searched, and you must be here, sick, no doubt. The commission in charge of maintaining order tries to stop me, but I push them aside and go in. There are people lying on the floor, the elderly, women on the verge of giving birth, little babies, the infirm; in short, those that were allowed to be here, under a roof. I go on; I go on looking for you, opening doors to rooms, cubicles, pavilions, or whatever damned names they call this hell. “Boy,” a half-naked woman says to me, “get out of here, the ambassador is hopping mad because people ate even his parrot.” But I keep searching all the compartments. I push open a door to find two bodies entangled in a strange way. I get close to them; mechanically I separate them and look at their faces, which look back at me in puzzlement. I leave. “It's incredible,” an old man tells me, his legs bandaged with assorted rags, “to feel like fucking when we have gone without any food for a whole two weeks.” . . . I go out again, crossing this sea of people, people about to collapse or barely holding up, tottering, looking for support from one another, and who, if they finally do collapse, can never reach the ground, because it doesn't exist. Covering the ground is the shit, the urine, the feet, all the feet, sometimes standing on others' feet, and sometimes supporting a person's whole body on only one foot. Thus, in this immense jungle of feet trying to move, I move. I keep after you. You're not going to get away from me. You're not going to get away. Don't think, you bitch, that you're going to escape. Definitely not now. Now that no one is even noticing you—well, they can scarcely look at anything—this time you really won't escape me, and I keep on, I keep on trailing her, as she (the sneak) is running toward the fence, toward the outside. But I continue, day and night, scrutinizing all the faces. You could be one of these. Is that you? Are you one of these? Hunger changes faces. Hunger can alter even our own brother beyond recognition. Perhaps you are also looking for me and don't recognize me. Heaven knows how many times we might have bumped into each other without realizing it. Really, are we still able to recognize each other? Fast, fast, we are getting more disfigured by the minute, and it will be more and more difficult to meet, to discover each other. That is why it's best to shout. Loudly. As loudly as possible. Louder than those damn loudspeakers outside. I'm calling you as loud as I can. But if I shout, how am I going to hear you if you're calling for me? I shout; then I keep silent for a moment, waiting for an answer from you, and then I shout again. Though we might not recognize each other, we'll be able to hear each other's shouts, to hear our names, to hear each other's calls. And finally, we'll meet. . . . So I go on shouting in the tumult, which is again agitated now. “Food, food, they are distributing food,” people scream. And again the crowd, with renewed miraculous energy, moves toward the fence. It's the same ritual again, the same beatings. “They are going to bring the fence down,” someone screams. If this happens, we won't be in Peruvian territory anymore. But the throng of people cannot be contained. Who can make his way through this crush? But I try, and I also push and advance between punches, slaps, kicks. Pushing away their faces, and bodies that roll over, I continue to the end. Now I am sure I will be able to find you. Yes, you must be there, by the fence; that's what an intelligent person like you would logically do, so you could be the first there to get whatever is distributed, the first there to hear whatever they say, and the first to see danger when it comes, and move back. I should have thought of that. Of course that's where you must be. So, pushing and shoving, kicking, biting, dragging myself through this witches' Sabbath of bodies that are also dragging themselves, I finally get to the wire fence and I hold on to it. Nobody can yank me away, damn it. Nobody is going to pull me out of here, I shout, beginning to observe the faces of all those who are managing to get here. But you are not among those who, like me, are now risking their lives to reach the fence. I look and look again at those desperate faces, but, certainly, none is yours. I see bloody hands that don't want to loosen their grip on the wires, but they are not your hands. Defeated, I stop looking at the fence and instead look through, out where the soldiers are, well fed, bathed, well armed, in uniform or civilian clothes, now getting ready to “serve” our food. And I discover you, finally I discover you. There you are, among them, outside, in uniform and armed. Speaking, making gestures, laughing, and having a conversation with someone who is also young, also armed and in uniform. I stare at you again while they begin, you begin, to distribute the small food boxes. Now they (you) go up to the corners, along the sides of the fence. The gun in one hand, the small box in the other. The distribution begins. The uproar and the blows from those next to me are now much heavier than before. They crush me, they want to crush me, they want to stand on top of me to reach one of those filthy boxes being handed out. Idiot, I call myself, while people kick me, climb over my body, use me as a springboard to get up like on a promontory, and desperately stretch their hands over the fence. Idiot, idiot, I call myself; and while everybody is walking over me, standing on me, jumping on me, I begin to laugh out loud, as if all those feet, all those legs covered with shit and mud were tickling me. . . . “That guy has gone crazy,” somebody says. “Leave him alone, he might be dangerous,” someone else says. And they move away from me, climb down off my body. Outside, the soldiers, also laughing, are methodically distributing the food boxes all along the fence. They place a box on the ground. They stand next to it and wait until someone reaches out for it, in order to smash that hand with a quick stomp. . . . I could right now stretch out my hand and grab that box. Whether they step on my hand or kick me in the chest, I won't starve anyway. So let no one imagine that I'm going to give them that satisfaction. And don't you start thinking I'm going to please you; don't let them think, don't you for an instant dream, that I'm going to eat that shit, that garbage, that filth. And least of all, that I would allow you to step on my hand in exchange for a hard-boiled egg. That is why, in order not to allow them that pleasure, I will remain here, motionless, triumphant, looking at them (at you) out there, playing games with that filth. So here I am, looking at them and laughing, while arms over my head are trying desperately to reach out. Then I actually see you for the first time. I discover you, also there, outside, trying to evade a shiny boot, running, dragging yourself silently across the asphalt and coming in, what a wild idea, with the throng of people, here with us. Here she goes, there she goes, almost in a daze, almost without the energy to keep trying to escape, but still moving, under the bodies, over the hands and faces barely blinking when she crosses them. She can't keep going. She can't keep going anymore after so many hours of trying to escape from me. And now she's stopping as if stunned, her mouth open, over somebody's back, someone who is lying facedown on the ground. She's desperately trying to jump somewhere. . . . I finally get you, you bitch, because even covered with filth, there is no escape left for you now.