“Well, spirits take on the form they always wished they’d had in their material lives,” I said, evoking Ramses’ words. “Believe me, this is the actual appearance your daughter has in the great beyond.”
“It doesn’t matter,” the old woman said. “It doesn’t matter to me at all. It’s my daughter and I’ll pay anything to have her with me again. Do you know how she died?”
“No.”
“It’s better if you don’t know. She was raped eleven times by three criminals, who afterward knifed her repeatedly, and then took everything she had in her purse. She was finishing up veterinary school — at the height of her youth.”
“She’s happy now with you,” I assured her.
“God bless you, son. I won’t eat, I won’t buy that plot of land in the cemetery I’m saving for. But it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t even matter to me to go without my heart medicine this month. My little daughter, my dear girl is with me.”
She turned around with the photos in her hands and came back a little while later with four one-hundred-dollar bills, all wet and wrinkled.
“Here you go,” she said. “That’s all I have. I know I’m one hundred dollars short, but I hope to God that kind-hearted Ramses can understand that there just isn’t anymore.”
“He’ll understand,” I said. “Don’t worry about that.”
I shook her bony hand and she gave me a kiss on the cheek.
“You don’t know how happy I am now,” was the last thing I heard her say when I was already in the car. I bid her farewell with a wave of my hand and went quickly back to the studio on Flagler Street.
“How did it go?” Ramses asked when he saw me.
“Fine. Here’s the money.”
“Only four hundred? I told her five hundred.”
“She doesn’t even have a bucket to kick when the time comes,” I explained.
“Nonsense! Those old folks have a lot of gold saved in the bank. You should have bargained. Tomorrow, I’ll go myself to get that hundred dollars. Now, go to the archive and look for a dachshund. It’s for another old lady who can’t be consoled after the death of her pet. I already photographed her, all I need is the dog lying at her feet.”
Calmly, without any emotion or desire to argue, I said to Ramses, “No, my friend. I’m done with this job right now.”
“What’s wrong with you, cubano? Aren’t you happy with the salary you’ve got? I’ll raise it to five hundred dollars a month soon.”
“I’m sorry, Ramses, it’s not that. Keep the money you owe me. Find someone else to deal with your archive. I’m leaving.”
“Oh, I get it. Scruples?”
“Something like that.”
“How long have you been in exile?”
“Three months,” I responded.
“You’ll never get a leg up.”
“I know.”
“Fine, leave if you want. Take this hundred dollars, you’ll
need it.”
“No, I don’t need it. Thank you.”
I turned my back to him and walked to the front door. From there, I heard Ramses raise his voice to say to me once more:
“You’ll never get a leg up here!”
I went out to the street. It was a beautiful summer afternoon and I started to walk toward downtown. I crossed the bridge, passed in front of the library, walked in front of the showy clothing and jewelry shops, and ended up at a lonesome park that bordered the sea.
There, I threw myself on the sand and leaned my head against a coconut tree. I didn’t have even one cent. I didn’t know where I was going to sleep in the days that followed, but I felt light, calm, almost happy.
O Pythagoras, Pythagoras! Keep me in mind when we see each other’s faces, there, in the afterlife.
THE PHANTOM BUNKER
Ferryman, oh, ferryman. Everything began because of that damned ferryman who was asking three thousand pesos to clandestinely take him out of the country.
“Three thousand, not one peso less,” the ferryman said, seated on the porch of his house, leaning against a wall decorated with revolutionary slogans, along with a picture of the tyrant Cornelio Rojas.
In his frustration, Danilo Castellanos had time to once again ponder the farce of a life that all of the country’s inhabitants lead. Nobody loved Cornelio Rojas, but in every house, like the ferryman’s, there were walls covered with revolutionary slogans and pictures of the dictator in a hundred different positions, in addition to a sign on every door that said, in brilliant letters, “This is your home, Cornelio.”
The ferryman, the man who had clandestinely taken more than five hundred people out on his shark fishing boat, gave the impression of being a loyal soldier to the dictatorship and the tyrant’s greatest admirer. “Three thousand, not one peso less,” the ferryman said again. And Danilo turned toward the street leading to the port, patting the paltry sixty pesos he had in his pocket. Three thousand; he needed three thousand. To wander the cafés of Paris, to get to know New York, to visit the Prado Museum in Madrid; to live like a free man for the first time in the thirty years he’d been alive. He walked toward the city. On every corner were enormous billboards with Cornelio Rojas’s face or those of the leading people in his government. Three thousand, three thousand. A legal ticket on an airplane would’ve cost a lot less, but Cornelio Rojas had forbidden all men under fifty years of age from leaving the country, due to military strategy and the agricultural need for strong arms and backs. Three thousand. Three thousand. Danilo sat down on a wall, in front of the sea, and began to sadly ponder ways to come up with three thousand pesos. His friends, teachers, and office workers lived day-to-day, like him, spending their paltry salaries on articles sold on the black market. His mother and father had died a long time ago. There was only his aunt Benigna, the aristocrat.
“Benigna is rich,” his mother had said to him before dying. “She must have over 20,000 pesos hidden away. But don’t ask her for one cent — don’t even try. She is the cheapest woman on earth.” And his mother added, “she doesn’t even keep the money in a bank. She hides it herself in the bathroom of her house, inside the wall, behind a blue tile below the sink.”
Aunt Benigna. She was the answer. He would go to her house in the neighborhood of Los Molinos, and he would cry, he would beg, he would kiss her feet so that she would lend him the money.
“None of that will do any good,” his mother had said. “My sister Benigna has a heart of steel. She could see you dying of hunger and still be incapable of feeling moved to give you one cent.”
Danilo Castellanos looked at the horizon over the sea for a long time. A ship with the French flag passed slowly before him with its prow headed toward freedom. He would steal. He would go see his aunt Benigna and would steal from her without hesitation the three-thousand pesos that the Ferryman required. Just three thousand; that way perhaps his aunt wouldn’t immediately notice it was missing. Yes, he would steal, and like the honest man he was, he would quickly return the money as soon as he was in the land of freedom. He stood up on the wall, contemplated the red ball of the sun that was sinking slowly into the sea, filled his lungs with salty air, and walked down the street toward the neighborhood of Los Molinos, one of the city’s most exclusive.
As he walked quickly, he pondered the steps he should take. His aunt would be surprised by the visit, after so many years without any word from him. But he would justify his absence by saying he was working as a history teacher in a town out in the countryside. He would smile, hug her, take her that orchid that bloomed in the funeral home’s garden. Then the difficult part would come; listening to his aunt, listening to the idiotic things she would say, and going through the enormous family album with her, containing all the photos of the grandparents, cousins, and childhood friends who were now dead or in exile. Then the crucial moment would come; the excuse for going to the bathroom. Diarrhea. That’s what he would say. He would feign strong stomach cramps and would ask the old lady if he could use her bathroom. There, below the sink, was the fortune. Three thousand. Just three thousand. And perhaps that same night, he would be on the Ferryman’s vessel, covered by a sheet, headed toward international waters, where a Swedish cargo ship or an American cutter or a Canadian cruise ship would take him to the land of freedom.