Mona and Other Tales (14 page)

“Close that hole right away,” said Angustias slowly but implacably.

Over their nephew's protests, the four sisters replaced the soil. When the job was finished, Martirio began to replant all the vegetation that Pepe had pulled out.

“Sister,” reproved Magdalena, “don't you understand that all of this is already useless?”

Martirio, who was holding up some young gardenias, began to whimper.

“Let's go inside,” commanded Angustias, pushing her sisters. “Come on. Don't you see you're making a scene? What will the neighbors say?”

“And don't you realize that this doesn't matter either, anymore?” answered Martirio, drying her tears.

Angustias seemed to hesitate for a moment but quickly recovered, saying, “Perhaps our last actions will be the ones that will count the most.”

And the four sisters went inside.

It was already late afternoon.

The ominous evening of April 11, 1910, was approaching. The encounter between Halley's comet and the earth, and therefore the end of the world, was expected in the early hours, shortly past midnight.

It must be pointed out that, in spite of the priest's fervent and constant sermons, some in Cárdenas still refused to heed him. Even though they were convinced that the end would come that night, those people did not devote themselves to repentance and prayer, but just the opposite. For their last hours on earth, they decided to have a ball. Early that afternoon groups of drunken youths began roaming the streets. Besides causing quite a ruckus, unheard of in that town, they sang bawdy songs and used shameless language. These people were joined by some women who until then had led more or less conventional lives. Sometimes this din even interfered with the litany of prayers headed by Angustias and echoed by her sisters.

In the middle of all the noise they heard a carriage stop in front of the house and, a few seconds later, someone knock at their door.

“Don't open the door!” Angustias shouted, without letting go of her rosary beads.

But the knocking became more insistent, so the four sisters, escorted by José de Alba, decided to go and see.

They opened the door with extreme caution, and there, in front of them, was Adela. She was wearing a magnificent evening gown of green taffeta adorned with red lace; white gloves; a red mantilla over her head; and a splendid pair of suede ankle-length boots. In her hands she carried a beautiful fan of peacock feathers and a sequined purse, both of which she hurled into the corridor so that she could embrace her sisters. But they stepped back in horror. Adela, unflappable, entered the house swaying her hips and gesturing to the coachman to bring down her luggage, a monumental trunk full of excellent wines, Baccarat glasses, a gramophone, and an oil painting that was an oversize portrait of Pepe El Romano.

“It seems that I am the only Christian in this family,” she said as she came into the sitting room. “I am not forgetting you at this critical moment. And besides, I have forgiven you.”

“But we haven't,” Angustias countered.

“Well, my dear, then I don't know what your religion is,” retorted Adela, taking off her shoes, “if even at a moment like this you are incapable of forgiving your own sister.”

As she glanced at the rosary Angustias still held in her fingers, it seemed to her a strange object, almost a nuisance.

“My dear sisters,” said Adela, full of emotion and taking advantage of the confusion her last words had caused, “I have come because this is the last night. Don't you see? The only night left in this world! And just as we escaped together from that other world of ours, which we hated, I would also like for us to abandon this one together. Our lives have been so different here, but never, not even for a day, have I forgotten you!”

If she intended to say more, the fact is, she couldn't. Her head sank into the red tulle tufts of her skirt, and she broke down, sobbing.

Martirio came to her first and, kneeling, embraced her legs. Quickly Amelia and Magdalena joined her, crying as well.

Finally Angustias took her hand and, pointing to José de Alba, spoke to Adela. “Here is your son. You don't have much time to explain to him who you are.”

“That will not be necessary,” said Adela. “He is already a man and can understand it all.”

“A man, already a man,” José de Alba gleefully told himself, and could not keep his cheeks from turning red.

“A man,” repeated Adela, “and a very handsome one, like his father.”

After asking the coachman to take care of the horses, she walked to the large trunk and began to unpack. She placed the glasses and a few bottles of wine on the table, took out the oversize portrait of Pepe El Romano, and, before anyone could raise an objection, hung the splendid canvas (it had been done by Landaluze) on the sitting room wall.

At the sight of his image, the Alba sisters were suddenly transformed.

“Yes,” Adela continued, lovingly looking at the portrait and then at her son, “he has his father's good looks, though he's more handsome. And to think that I have come to know you precisely now, just as the world is coming to an end. A corkscrew! I need a corkscrew!”

“What did you say?” Angustias asked, surprised at the sudden shift in Adela's train of thought.

“Yes, dear, a corkscrew. Or are we just going to sit here waiting for the end of the world without even a glass of wine?”

Angustias began to object. But Martirio was already there with the corkscrew.

“Where did you get that?” Magdalena asked in amazement. “We have never used it in this house.”

“You haven't used it because you never cook. But how do you think we open a bottle of wine vinegar?”

“My dear sisters! I cannot believe this!” interrupted Adela, filling the glasses with an excellent red wine. “The world is coming to an end and you argue about a corkscrew. Take your glasses of wine and let's go to the garden to watch the comet.”

“It won't appear until midnight,” said Amelia.

“Obviously you are behind the times,” answered Adela. “At midnight is when the world ends, but the comet can be seen after sunset. Haven't you read the newspapers from Havana?”

“We never read that sort of thing,” Angustias protested.

“Your loss,” said Adela, “and it is too late to remedy that.”

With that, she reached for her son, who was watching her enthralled, and led him by the hand into the garden.

It was a splendid evening, an exceptional tropical night, the kind that can be particularly enjoyed in Cuba. A pale luminosity seemed to come from the land and from the sea. Each tree seemed to be contained in its own halo. In that small town still innocent of electricity, the sky was illuminated as if by some rare candlelight. All the constellations, and even the most remote stars, were sending out a signal, a message that was perhaps complex, perhaps simple, but now already impossible to decipher. The May Cross (though it was April) could be clearly seen; the Seven Sisters were unmistakable; and reddish Orion, distant but familiar, was twinkling. A spring moon rose over the ocean, leaving a track of light that dissolved in the waters. Only a body like a celestial serpent interrupted the harmony of the sky. Halley's comet was making its appearance in the peacefully scintillating immensity of the astral canopy. Then, in a clear but remote voice, Adela began to sing:

Girls and women in this town,
Don't keep your shutters down.
The reaper of roses is near,
Seeking a bloom for his ear.

 

And suddenly, as if a powerful impulse held back for many years had been let loose, her sisters joined in the chorus:

The reaper of roses is near,
Seeking a bloom for his ear.

 

They kept singing, and Adela, who had had the foresight to bring with her a bottle of wine, refilled their glasses.

Girls and women in this town,
Don't keep your shutters down.
Let's get married by the sea,
By the sea, by the sea.

 

Once more the glasses were emptied. Then Adela started to speak.

“Yes,” she said, pointing toward the comet, “that ball of fire that is crossing the skies, and that in a few hours will annihilate us, is the ball of fire that all of you”—and unsteadily she now pointed to her four sisters—“all of you have between your thighs, and because you did not put it out at the appropriate time, it now flares up, seeking its just revenge.” They started to protest, but Adela kept talking and served them more wine. “That ball of fire is like the embers Bernarda Alba would have stuck into Librada's daughter to punish her for having behaved like a woman. Sisters of mine! That ball of fire is you, who did not want to quench the fire of desire, as I did, and now you are going to burn for all eternity. Yes, it is a punishment. Not for what we did, but for what we did not do. And you still have time! You still have time!” Adela stood shouting in the middle of the garden, her voice mingling with the songs that the drunks waiting for the end were singing in the street. “You still have time, not to save your lives, but to gain admission to heaven. And how do you get to heaven?” she asked, already inebriated, standing by the gardenias. “With hate or with love? Through abstinence or through pleasure? With sincerity or with hypocrisy?” She tripped, but José de Alba, who had been transformed into the sheer image of Pepe El Romano, kept her from falling, and she, in gratitude, kissed him on the lips. “Two hours! We have only two hours left!” she shouted, looking at her handsome silver watch, a gift from a Dutch beau. “Let's go inside the house and pass our last minutes in loving communion.”

The six figures staggered into the sitting room. The tropical heat made them, with Adela's help, abandon most of their clothes. Bonnets, gloves, overcoats, skirts, even petticoats vanished. Adela herself helped her son part with his bowler hat, his necktie, his shirt. She led him—both of them half-dressed—to Pepe El Romano's portrait and proposed a general toast. They all raised their glasses.

“I don't know what's going to happen here,” Angustias said without a hint of protest, leaning on her nephew's arm to steady herself.

“Wait a second,” Adela said, and, walking to her trunk, she took the gramophone out and placed it on the center table. The whole house immediately vibrated with the voice of Raquel Meller singing a popular ditty.

It was not necessary to organize couples. Angustias started dancing with Pepe, Magdalena danced with Amelia, and Martirio led Adela, who, getting rid of her blouse, confessed that she had never grown accustomed to the tropical heat.

“I did not snitch on you to Mother because of love for Pepe El Romano,” Martirio said, as if someone had asked her. “I did it because of you.”

“I suspected that,” Adela answered. And the two women embraced.

Because the drunken clamor in the street was now deafening (there was only an hour and three minutes left before the end of the world), they decided to close the windows, draw the curtains, and play the gramophone as loud as possible. As they danced around, someone turned off the lights. And the whole house was illuminated only by the stars, the moon, and Halley's comet.

When Raquel Meller sang
“Fumando espero”
(Smoking While I Wait for You)—and according to their calculations, there were only forty-five minutes until the end of the world—Adela opened the door and signaled the coachman to come in. A handsome freed slave from the Santa María district, he was overjoyed at the invitation. Wasting no time, he happily shed his livery and leather boots.

Before the gramophone needed rewinding again, both José de Alba and the coachman were embracing the five—by now scantily dressed—women one by one. The glasses were filled again, and all of them, practically naked, devoted themselves to making love under the enormous portrait of Pepe El Romano.

“We're not going to wait for the world to end inside these four walls,” said Adela. “Let's go out.”

The five Alba sisters, without a stitch on, were soon out in the street, accompanied by José, still in his drawers, and the coachman, who had only his spurs on.

As long as the sky keeps turning (and we trust it will never stop), no one will hear the kind of screaming that was heard in the streets of Cárdenas that night. The coachman—cued, it is fair to say, by Adela—possessed the five women one after the other, followed immediately by José de Alba, who made a masterly debut. Finally, many bumpkins (as Angustias called them) joined the cavalcade, repeatedly mounting all the women, who evidently were not ready to stop yet. Only Martirio occasionally took advantage of the confusion to escape from the arms of some ruffian and go for Adela's breasts. A bit later the two sisters (and now there were only fifteen minutes left before the end of the world) went inside the house and came back right away carrying Pepe El Romano's portrait.

“Now we can go on,” said Adela, as she placed the painting facing the stars.

There were only five minutes now before Halley's comet reached its central position in the skies.

And so it did. And then it continued on its trajectory. And it disappeared over the horizon. And the sun rose. And by noon, when the Alba sisters woke up, they were amazed to see themselves, not in hell or in paradise, but in the middle of the main street in Cárdenas, totally in the buff and still embracing several farm laborers, and a coachman, also buck naked. José de Alba, who seemed as youthful as ever despite his many sexual encounters, emerged once more from the sweaty bodies. The only thing that had disappeared in the confusion was the portrait of Pepe El Romano, though nobody had noticed.

“Well, well, so the world didn't end,” said Adela, half-asleep. Stretching, she convinced her sisters that the best thing to do was to return home.

The procession back was led by Angustias, whose fiftyeight-year-old bare body was in the sunlight for the first time; next came Magdalena, arm in arm with the coachman; behind them, Amelia, with someone who said that he was an unemployed carpenter; and at the rear of the retinue, the tight trilogy of Martirio, Adela, and José. In this order they walked through their garden, perfumed as usual by the gardenias, and went inside the house.