Firefly (13 page)

He continued trudging along the boardwalks suspended over the muck, cobbled together with flimsy planks and wobbly,
poorly anchored pillars, very high above the water. These wooden paths were not straight, rather they converged and forked with no apparent motive, perhaps following the precarious solidity of the ground or the convenience of the impromptu mullet fishermen, hungry for the oily opalescent eggs, who with nothing more than a lantern and a hammock occupied the derelict houses during the season and vacated them as soon as the ban was declared.

Suddenly, several of the creaking walkways seemed to flow into one, wider and more solid than the others, made with sturdier crossbeams. In the distance, sinking into the sea, or into that mortar of brine and silt that took its place on the nearby horizon, he could make out an enormous house, fixed up not long ago and slathered with garish colors.

These were not canals the way the lunar herald had announced; more like mud creeks, thinner and more fluid than the rest of the bog.

Firefly picked up his pace. He was zipping along now, closing in on the lurid purple doorway, anxious to read the words engraved on a vertical piece of varnished wood carved in undulations, like a prayer flag, when an ill-fated skid sent him face-first into the muck.

He started flapping his arms, as if anyone could swim in that slime. He was sinking. He knew that he had to hold still, that
every attempt to rise up would bury him further. Carefully he stretched one leg, then the other. But he could not bring himself any closer to the posts holding up the boardwalk, though they were nearly within reach, an arm's length away.

His body was a thing apart, a rough and shoddy entity he neither felt nor wished to feel.

The muscles in his arms were useless. For an instant, he imagined them bulging and covered in tattoos; he dreamed his body was obeying him, climbing effortlessly up to the boardwalk. He breathed deeply. He stiffened up. He remembered the stepladder he had mounted as a child in order to describe the hurricane.

Then he realized how alone he was. Unless he managed to clamber up on that boardwalk, no one would rescue him and he would sink for good into the mud, into the rot.

He tried to call for help, knowing it was useless.

Such a familiar failure: He opened his mouth and nothing came out.

He decided to wait. To attempt no movement. His body became somehow undifferentiated, mixed in with the slime and of the same texture. All he had to do was stop breathing and thinking to become forever one with the bog; he was already an inert substance, scum in the scum.

For Firefly an entire day went by, even if in the crude ticking of clocks the interval lasted only an hour. He thought he would never reach those posts, that he would become completely immobilized, a stone statue fallen into the muck centuries ago. He was crying, he realized. He had no idea how much time had truly passed.

The surface of the mud was swarming. Thousands of iridescent green insects with gigantic legs and filigreed wings jumped and chased each other on the thin mossy coating; others navigated slowly, sliding in pairs along minuscule shoots from one lily pad to the next.

A frog jumped.

The sun began to go down.

Firefly opened his eyes, perhaps to hear better.

He turned his head. Yes, it was the distant roar of a motor. A small boat was approaching from the sea.

“A drowned man!” yelled one of the crew. “A drowned man!”

Firefly recognized them right off. In taking away his sense of direction, Mother Nature – always stingy in her consolations – had given him the ability to recognize anyone immediately, no matter if he had only laid eyes on him once and just for a moment. In this instance, he was certain that both of them had been in the basement of the Gothic tower.

They pointed at him from afar with curiosity bordering on disgust; he might have been a beached shark. Between sneering jibes, they fished him out, sopping and silent.

“Just what you deserve, kid, so you'll learn not to get drunk and wander about alone in places like this!” one shouted at him.

“Come off it, pal,” replied the other. “You can see he's old enough for that! He wasn't going to spend his whole life jerking himself off!”

The man was wearing nothing but a bathing suit and a thick silver chain bearing a charm. He was emaciated. His cranium shone with the morbid gleam of tanning oil. His flesh was milky and insipid.

The other, redheaded and freckled, came armored with a baseball cap and green sunglasses, a big flowery shirt, very tight white pants, and canvas shoes.

Once they had deposited Firefly in one of the white seats of their impeccable launch, like a freshly caught porgy left to suffocate on dry land, they carried on with the taunts, since watching him gasp for breath seemed to amuse them.

“Have some rum to warm up. Though you must be pretty warm already to end up down there, right?” They cracked up.

“I . . . I was looking for the big house,” Firefly tried to explain. “A big house where two canals meet.”

“Aha! So you don't know your way around here and don't even have a clue what's what! Then what were you doing here alone at this time of day, girlie? Fishing around for the big bullfrog?” More cackles.

“Enough, cut the clowning,” the bald one decided. “If you want to go into the pavilion, we'll take you. That's why we're members and come whenever we feel like it. Though we always take the boat, not like you dragging yourself through the mud. Dry yourself off with this sponge. And here, put on a clean T-shirt.”

Only then did Firefly grasp what he had seen carved on the placard by the door:
THE PAVILION OF THE PURE ORCHID.

They took hold of the wooden banner and yanked on it, like they were milking a cow. Far away, deep inside the ramshackle house, maybe at the back of a kitchen filled with sacks of flour or perhaps only muffled by the sticky, ever-present humidity, a little bell rang, dark and dull like the low keys on a marimba.

When the new owners christened the house, they must have scraped the placard with the tip of a jackknife; underneath the letters of the new name a few of the previous ones were still visible in elegant, sparkling gold loops:
THE
. . .
IDEA.

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.