Two metal lounge chairs, rusted and unusable, their once-perfect springs now greenish-black and bunched up, flanked the heavy repainted door, which was perforated near the top by a deep peephole like a miniature spyglass. Quietly swaying to the rhythm of the breeze like bunches of charred garlic heads, bat colonies hung from the eaves.
Three bolts rattled: the first a rough rasp like a horseshoe clattering against red marble; the next two soft glides like the trigger on an antique revolver.
A black man opened the door.
His cheeks and forehead were covered in tribal tattoos.
He looked the three of them over from head to toe, and considered before offering a perfunctory, nearly inaudible, “Gentlemen, come in.” Either he was not sure he recognized them or he recalled from the last visit their less than adequate tips. Thinking it over, he added in a dry cutting tone, “Are you certain that the youngster is old enough to do us the honor of a visit? Do you know the baron? Would you like me to call him right now?”
“The youngster?” the bald one erupted, huffy and scornful. “Take a good look, and if that won’t do then give him a feel. Come on, in the crotch and you’ll see!” He grabbed hold of the Dahomean’s arm and started pulling on it.
The doorman, maybe worried about herpes, snatched it back; Firefly had turned bright red and was covering his nether parts to ward off the clutch. The redhead raised his hands to his head, then jerked his right thumb at his mouth to indicate to the somber acolyte the drunken cause of such immoderation.
Inside, a cockpit was the first thing that came to Firefly’s mind. It was a big circular wooden structure open to the tiled roof with a chandelier in the center. Along the outer edges, crudely sewn folding screens made of nun-gray sugar sacks formed slapdash cells that hugged the walls haphazardly, shabby little rooms that looked ready to collapse at the slightest jostle.
Gigantic tree ferns: that was what stood out in the middle. A fern jungle, whose wrinkled leaves sheltered the fraying damask and gold threads of a curved sofa. Two white platforms, each with lateral stages like those used for Olympic champions, flanked this ridiculous piece of furniture.
In the middle of each cell — now that the gloom had dissipated and he could see — lay a large wicker lounge chair, sagging or wobbly, and next to it a night table of the same weave bearing a glass, an ashtray, and an oval bottle filled with mint liqueur.
“Gentlemen, please be seated,” the tattooed man invited. “The booths are individual. I shall bring you ice in a moment.”
Off he went down a hallway, but not before encouraging Firefly, who by all appearances looked terrified. “And you, young man, don’t be so afraid of being seen. Here no one gets eaten. You can have a wonderful time all by yourself; everyone minds his own business and that’s all there is to it. One thing, and don’t ever forget it since you’re new: one looks but one does not touch. Plaisir des yeux,” he added, snooty and churlish, no doubt quoting some madame who had once visited the island.
He returned shortly, distributed the ritual refreshments, and carefully closed the folding screens. In the damp, soiled fabric crisscrossed with stitches only a single slit remained, offering a view of the improvised stage.
The moment the partitions shut, Firefly felt a gratuitous fear of being closed in, just as one day in the shade of the royal poinciana he had felt afraid of being out in the open.
The discomfort was very familiar; he resigned himself to suffering it once more.
A few tambourines sounded.
The ferns moved slightly, suggesting a wayward bird flitting from branch to branch, or an impossible sea breeze breaching the wall.
It was neither: parting the greenery were big strapping young mulattos crowned with laurel wreaths and garbed in light-blue Greek tunics and sandals. The youngest, a good-looking buck, held aloft a lyre.
They occupied the platforms, exhibiting the Ionic manners and sepia poise of an old Sicilian photograph.
On the highest stages on either side of the sofa, somber teenagers pretended to play the sistrum, like Arcadian shepherds lost in the bog, whose noxious vapors kept spoiling the scene. On the lateral platforms, seated without much conviction, practically loafing, the tambourine players officiated.
The refreshments, like some vegetarian’s transgression, all contained pork: soaked in honey, wrapped in guava or basil leaves, fried rinds or with cassava, each of them flecked with the fresh greenery of Spanish fly.
Firefly tried to wipe off the snacks, but the pinching bitter taste still came through. So he drank an entire glass of the mint liqueur, warm — the waiter, of course, had forgotten the ice.
The tambourines stopped.
A teenage girl appeared, practically a child, a mulatta with green eyes and cinnamon skin. From chin to ankles she was covered in dense necklaces, thick amber charms, golden seashells, and fresh sunflowers, so many that her body seemed bent under the weight. They had painted her eyebrows with cinnabar, her cheeks with eggshell. Her mouth was white. She smiled. She was a mahogany sculpture, loaded down with offerings, rising amid the big adolescents in profile.
As soon as they saw her, the brown boys began fondling themselves, as if the mulatta’s body, beyond being a display of purity and nakedness, was the cue for an encounter among boys, the go-ahead for a slight shock. More: for an orgy.
In the middle of the stage, a tall fleshless man with sharp bones and a sallow complexion, shuffling awkwardly in sandals, handed the lads little tubs or rather pouches sheathed in snakeskin and overflowing with fresh green crushed herbs, moist and poisonous.
He distributed the soft containers, then with his index finger he caressed his own upper lip out to his cheekbone, apparently trying to remove an invisible stain, or to smooth the rough edges of an ugly scar.
It was Gator.
And the fat man at his side, wrapped in a sticky toga, his feet bare and swollen, could be none other than Isidro.
During a break from the tambourines, Firefly heard, or believed he heard, a conversation between the two weasels.
“What’s up?” Isidro yelled, gesturing wildly, flushed by the herbs or by the porky refreshments with Bacardi. “Hasn’t the new one shown her face?”
“I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with her,” Gator answered hotly. “She should be here any minute.”
“So what are you going to call her?” asked Isidro mischievously.
“Hada. Her real name.”
“We’ve got to change that.”
In that in-between zone, when surfacing from sleep but not yet fully awake, images can get condensed into words that seem entirely made up of sounds or silences. Just like that, Firefly, his face pressed against the slit in the grimy folding screen, saw: THEY TRICKED YOU.
The piercing whistle of the letters shattered his eardrums, wove a red-hot net inside his body that set him aflame.
Then something even more powerful than those tiny blazing threads shook him from stem to stern. Another image, as unreal and as substantive as the previous, appeared on the very same stage: Ada naked, offered up for ogling, the pretext for the old weasels’ solitary fondling.
He felt a bitter wave rise into his mouth, green like the herbs, weedy and rank. He tried to think about another green: the ceiba tree next to the fishpond, filtering white vertical light. A lethal lava burned in his stomach. Then he saw the girl seem to look up at the heavens, or at the glass chandelier that occupied their celestial place on the cockpit’s ceiling. Her eyes were opaque and dry, her gestures dull, her steps awkward and slow.
The big boys, without interrupting the tambourine beat, dipped the tips of their fingers into something gooey at the bottom of the little sacks and licked them as if they were secretly sucking on nectar’s essence.