“Secondly, camouflage, for nothing guarantees that the cosmetic (or surgical) conversion of man into woman doesn’t have, as its hidden final goal, a kind of disappearance, of invisibility, of effacement and erasure of the macho himself from the aggressive tribe, from the brutal macho horde. And finally,” Muscles continued, “comes intimidation, for the frequent disarray or excessive make-up, the visibility of the artifice, the variegated mask, paralyse or terrify, as happens with certain animals who use their appearance to defend themselves or hunt, or to compensate for natural defects or virtues they don’t have: courage or cunning, right?”
The Other – always so vulgar, “camouflaged” behind a culture he didn’t possess, sonorously sucking the goat cutlets he was devouring – Muscles was paying – looked out of the window, as if he were searching for something.
“But, at the end of the day,” he asked, “are they queens or aren’t they?”
The truth is I never discovered why Muscles insisted on bringing him with us on our sentimental, culinary tours of Paris. Because the Other Boy – as everybody knows – only wants queens, and the more publiclavatory and over-the-top the better. And if Muscles needed someone to cross swords with, there were thousands in Paris, and he had five-star choices, so beautiful and sweet…
“Cubanly speaking I would say, ‘Yes, they are queens,’ ” Muscles finally declared, a man who also had his off-the-rails longing for queens. “Like you,” and he smiled, pointing at the Other, “but more daring, you know? And while we’re about it, do you want to go tomorrow, Saturday, to a cabaret where some transves tites will perform?”
I was so struck by the invitation that I furiously downed the contents of one of those amphoras, something I’d never done and will never do again as long as I live. But everything was possible in Paris: even drinking without getting drunk… We walked home through the city, and it was that night, in Muscles’ studio, that I began to etch some lines on cardboard, and by dawn I’d designed the red dress my Electra Garrigo would wear in that luminous, tragically aborted performance which showed Virgilio Pinera his work was more inspired than he could ever warrant.
The Count thought: this pansy and a half is getting on my wick, just as he realized he couldn’t repress his desire to urinate. This story of Parisian transvestites the Marquess (as his coteries entitled him) had narrated, searching for the red dress of his dear little friend who’d been murdered, was too much like a fable rehearsed and staged to snare the unwary, catch them in a spider’s web and swallow them, perhaps intellectually, maybe physically when, for example, they said they needed to urinate. He crossed his legs and it got worse: the pressure grew on a bladder overwhelmed by liquids he’d ingested to mitigate the heat and he realized he had two options in this emergency: to withdraw or to ask the dramatist if he could use his lavatory. The first solution was as hopeless as the second, for he didn’t want to establish any kind of relationship with that character, but nor could he abandon him now, when he presented himself as the best way into the more scabrous mysteries in the double life of Alexis Arayan. The Marquess, fallen on hard times, was his main witness, perhaps even the murderer of the masked man, although, he thought, while he felt he was about to urinate and reviewed yet again his host’s physical disposition, how could such premature baby arms have strangled anyone? But the Count had always thought urinating in a stranger’s house was the first step to a revealing intimacy: seeing what’s in a bathroom is like seeing into people’s souls: dirty pants, an unflushed toilet or perfumed bath gel are usually as revealing as a confession to a priest.
“I need to go to the bathroom,” he said, without first instructing his brain.
He supposed the Marquess would smile and he did, and he glanced down at the Count in a way that made him feel his privates had been weighed, measured and fondled.
“Just through there, third door on the left. Oh, and to flush you must hold the handle down till the water swills out all your emanations, get me?”
“Thanks,” replied the Count, standing up and accepting that his bladder had let him down badly. He made for the dark passage and walked through two rooms: as he was in the Marquess’s line of vision, he hardly looked to one side or the other, but he saw one was a bedroom and the second a study, with books piled high to a remote ceiling. Then he discovered the origin of the odour he hadn’t been able to identify initially: it was the oppressive, alluring scent of old, damp, dusty paper that came from that equally dark precinct, where was to be found what must be Alberto Marques’s library, surely inhabited by authors and works banned by certain codes and exotic publishing wonders, unimaginable to the ordinary reader, that the Count tried to conjure up using residues of intellect not preoccupied by doubt as to whether or not he’d reach the lavatory in time.
He opened the door and looked at the bathroom: unlike the rest of the house, it seemed clean and organized, but he didn’t stop to scrutinize. He stood in front of the bowl, brought his desperate penis into the light of day and began urinating, feeling the whole world was relieved by the jet hitting the glaze. And it ran on and on as he looked towards the door and thought he saw a shadow through the panes of murky glass which had been badly patched up. Could he be looking at him? The Count put his hand over his penis and stopped urinating as he peered at the door. This is all I needed, he thought, as he shook himself, and welcomed the incontrollable shiver that accompanied the end of micturition. He rapidly popped his diminished extremity into his trousers and flushed the toilet, following the instructions given. Goodbye, effluvia.
When he went into the corridor he saw the Marquess in the sitting room, seated in his armchair. He walked over to him and sat down again.
“How lovely to urinate when you feel like it, don’t you agree?” commented the dramatist, and the Count was certain he’d been observed. Fuck your mother, he said to himself, this is too much, but he tried to get back on to the offensive.
“And what has all this Paris story got to do with Alexis Arayan?”
The Marquess smiled, then tittered.
“Forgive me,” he said. “Well, it has to do with the dress they found him in and the fact he wasn’t a transvestite. Rather he wasn’t what you’d call practising, although he sometimes played at it. He donned disguises and created various personae. As much feminine as masculine, though he’d never have been capable of going on stage, you understand? He was too shy and cerebral for that and very inhibited, do you see?… But he always liked that dress, the one I designed on that night in Paris for my version of Electra Garrigo to be premiered in the Theatre des Nations in Paris in 1971. And although Alexis was homosexual, as you must have gathered, I never imagined he’d have the daring necessary to be a transvestite and, as far as I know, he never did go into the street dressed as a woman.”
“So why did he do so yesterday?”
“I don’t know, you should find out… That is what you’re paid for, aren’t you?”
“Apparently,” replied the Count. “By the way, was Alexis Catholic?”
“Yes, of course. And half mystic.”
“And did he ever mention the day of the Transfiguration?”
“Of the transfiguration? What transfiguration?”
“Christ’s… the one celebrated yesterday, on August sixth.”