Firefly remained motionless behind the door, which had swung shut, contemplating that viscous spectacle: The rectangular glass window deformed the faces, flattening cheekbones and noses, as if someone had taken sandpaper to them.
“About time, little madam, about time,” exclaimed the most pallid and potted of the old crocks. “All the blessed night waiting for you. And now that you’re here at last, you’ve come, if I understand correctly, empty-handed. Isn’t that the case?”
A dry little cough made him shudder.
“Not at all, gentlemen, not at all,” the scrawny girl answered, feigning offense. “Surprises await. But please, a little patience.”
“Surprises? At this point?” replied the elderly man with a hint of incredulity. “So, where are they?”
“For the time being,” the withered girl responded as she backed away, “keep your eyes on the waterfall, that always calms the nerves. And have some coffee with a nice glass of cold papaya wine.”
She let out a cackle and stepped toward a folding screen set up on the other side of the room.
A large curved window of thick glass, like a jeweler’s loupe, interrupted the succession of tapestries and their grim copulations, and distorted the view of what lay beyond: a Japanese garden, complete with squares of raked sand, bonsai trees, and a waterfall, the whole of it stretched like elastic at the edges, bulging in the center, and excessively illuminated by footlights of all colors.
Despite the glass window, the chatter in the room, and the cushiony covering on the door, Firefly could hear water splashing faintly.
Evaporation created a perpetual rainbow, smooth and motionless, above the polished rocks and the dwarf bushes that embraced the extremes of a little wooden bridge lacquered in red.
A sudden squeal of hinges suggested the inverted tower they were in had a hidden, surely minuscule, entry on the side opposite the spiral staircase.
There was silence.
Steps behind the folding screen. Firefly could make out a few voices in the distance, unrecognizable.
More silence.
In the room, someone getting up knocked over one of the little chairs, which smacked sharply against the floor like a whip or a slap.
Slow steps echoed under the vault.
In front of the suddenly animated audience (murmurs and exclamations were promptly repeated by the domed ceiling), right there, dressed in white, stood Ada.
The sight of her came and went instantaneously in Firefly’s eyes, because all he could perceive was his heart exploding, something in his breast shattering into a thousand pieces.
“My god,” was all he managed to think. “My body’s so faulty and frail, how could I possibly endure such pain?”
He tried to breathe, but his chest was already a well filled with poison.
His bronchial tubes were made of glass and they wounded him as they splintered. He was freezing, he thought about his sister, he needed air. In trying to breathe, he emitted a high-pitched whistle tasting of rust and unbrushed teeth.
He was drenched in sweat. He smelled the foul odor of his own perspiration. His knees trembled.
That was when one of the venerable gentlemen, with an abrupt gesture as if making a superhuman effort to break a spell or a tableau vivant, stepped forward from the enraptured group and reached the place where the girl selected for the ritual, perhaps by now resigned to it, awaited.
With the tip of his index finger, carefully, as if he did not wish to offend her, almost with diffidence, he touched her on the forehead.
And he tasted a drop of her sweat.
Ada was pallid. An involuntary tremor seemed to take hold of her starting from her hands, a sudden iciness rising from her feet. Who knows why she sent her gaze upward; perhaps she did not want to face the men’s eager eyes resting unctuously on her body, their moist maneuvers.
Always carefully, delicately, as if he did not wish to offend her, the ocambo slid his index finger along the borders of her lips, and then, with medical proficiency, pulled down her lower eyelid.
He turned to face the spectators.
And he nodded his head.
Another man, fat and jolly, egged on by the first, came toward her in short hops, like a tomeguin finch.
Finally he mustered his aplomb and caressed Ada’s hair, paternally, affectionately, gazing at her with pity. He let the brilliant red strands slide through his fingers, admiring their texture and color. With almost exaggerated care, he pulled one out. He held it by the ends and stretched it, apparently to test its elasticity.
He then turned and rejoined the eager clan of lustful men.
“To survive,” Firefly told himself straightaway, an order dictated by blind prenatal instinct, “I must convince myself that nothing I am seeing or hearing is true. Soon I will realize that I am dreaming, and I will feel the cool varnished wood of the recamier against my feet, the silk rubbing against my sex, and my sex staining it white. That’s reality. None of this exists. If I don’t believe that, I’m done for.”
WALL TILES, WITH BONY DANCE BAND
He woke up in a beer hall by the harbor, ignorant of who had brought him there or why. They had set him down in a wicker rocking chair, which was still swaying gently.
Before him was a tall frigid wall mosaic: a brutally realistic portrayal of a big band made up of skeleton musicians perched on kegs of beer or clambering with their pointy elbows and knees up pyramids of chilled bottles overflowing with foam and bearing soggy labels for Hatuey and Polar.
The rumba-dancing skeletons tooted on bamboo flutes, sashayed their sharp hips, strummed raspy guitars with long fingernails black as oxhorn. Several of them chugged entire bottles; others, their empty eye sockets peering at the recipe instructions engraved on a rolling pin, prepared a succulent punch that they adorned with slices of pineapple, gigantic olives, glazed cherries, and even little Chinese parasols that they stuck into a yielding mass of chunky ice cubes.
In front of that garish yet graceful display — scrubbed daily with coal-tar cleanser, or at least so it looked — sporting an indifference or impudence not uncommon among errant and nocturnal people who drift through life with no fixed port, the coachman suddenly appeared. Unbuttoned and unshaven, he looked sleepless, like someone returning from a wake where they served no snacks or from a girl’s fifteenth birthday party.
“So, just like in fairy tales. ” he whispered straight off, coming overly close to Firefly’s ear to win an unwarranted confidence, the telltale move of a rascal or a pickpocket. His foul breath flooded the air repeatedly like a haze of bagasse. “What happened afterwards?”
“After what?” Firefly rubbed his eyes.
“After we saw each other, you big oaf.” The driver adopted an exaggerated air of mock astonishment. And he began to dig around his teeth with a toothpick.
“This morning. ”
“Come on, man! You know we saw each other yesterday morning, or doesn’t time mean anything to you? Tell me, what happened after that?”
“After. ” Firefly managed to mumble, but somehow he could not wake up entirely or articulate anything without tripping over his tongue.
A big, smooth-skinned mulatta with green eyes steamed across the beer hall toward the back room or the kitchen. She was dressed as a rumba dancer in a skirt with starched flounces; her belly showed and colored ribbons embellished her billowing sleeves. Around her head was an assembly of metallic curlers held tight by a hairnet with plastic coral-hued flowers.
Struck perhaps by something she had forgotten or needed urgently, she came to an abrupt halt beside a chest, immense and dark like a varnished casket, mahogany with copper hinges. She lifted the lid and, struggling to hold it open, pulled a phonograph from the depths. There was a record already in place, with the attentive and alienated dog of His Master’s Voice. Using the fairly rusty lateral crank, she wound it up. Then the scratchy voice of Rita Montaner blossomed.