Firefly (7 page)

He was about to enter the moth heaven that was his room,
when he saw pressed against an office door, standing stock-still, a figure he could not make out in the darkness of the hallway. Someone was peeking through a keyhole or glued to the wood listening, apparently not even breathing, eavesdropping on what was occurring inside.

He approached silently. No doubt about it. It was she, Ada, so fascinated by what she was hearing that she did not even notice his presence, his nearness. When he reached her the redhead gave a start and covered her mouth. Having stifled her cry, she put a finger to her lips, opening wide those purple eyes in which Firefly thought he could see himself acknowledged, perhaps reflected, as in a minuscule and convex ship's mirror.

“Who is it?” the melon-head asked straight off in a whisper, as if the snooping had rekindled a long-standing complicity of which this chance meeting was but an astute step, minutely plotted.

She moved close, her lips to his ear. Her mothball-and-violets perfume, the rhythm of her breathing, the warmth of her breath against the lobe of his ear all shook him with the same intensity as the fear or desire that made him tremble when he rubbed himself against the silk or the words he had overheard coming from the ship.

“It's them,” the redhead murmured, as if their identities went without saying. “Them again.”

Firefly's right hand went to his throat, his breath caught short.

“The same ones? Are you sure?”

“Yup. Greaseball and Boots from his own skin.”

“The healers . . . Isidro and Gator, those are their names . . .”

“Them . . .”

“So . . . how come?”

Ada touched one of her index fingers to the other in a rapid indication of a bridge, a contact, an electrical charge, something going on between the peroxide giraffe and the odious men.

Inside, the conversation stopped.

Firefly was about to say, “Let's get out of here,” when the door flew open.

The spied-upon trio came into view. They were rigid, flushed with contained rage. In the middle reigned Munificence, her Venetian tower in full erection, an emblem of unwavering determination. On either side, like two merciless Cerberuses awaiting the order to kill, were Fatso (his alcoholism evident in the pendular oscillation of his gelatinous body and in the incandescence of his beady eyes, now tinged orange like a vulture's behind those heavy lenses) and bearded Gator, who brandished a decoction like an avenging dagger in his raised right hand, his face frozen in an infanticidal smirk.

From these offended souls emanated a reproving, practically
mucilaginous silence that stuck to the skin, that befouled, and that – Firefly felt it immediately – also enveloped the redhead, trapping the two of them in a single net of disgust.

It was Munificence who spoke up, without raising her voice, her teeth clenched tight enough to squeak.

“I knew it,” she spit out each syllable, the words like hissing blow-darts sent to punch holes in them. A moment of silence, then, “What a disgrace my life is! What a disgrace!”

She leapt upon the defenseless redhead as if on a bloodied prey, seizing her in the blink of an eye by both shoulders. Quickly she covered her mouth and hauled her the length of the hall and down the stairs.

Firefly thought he heard Ada's sobs, then realized he was alone with the two henchmen. What surprised him most, however, was not the suddenness of his abandonment but the inexplicable reaction of the visitors: They looked at each other, as astounded as the melon-head himself . . . and they burst out laughing!

“So, now we're grown up, little man!” Gator fired at him derisively while opening the door wide and stepping aside, extending his hand toward the interior of the office in a gesture of invitation.

“Come in, young gentleman, come in,” Isidro added in the same tone. “As you can see, there is still plenty left for a surprise guest.”

On the desk, with no more utensils than two baccarat goblets, a kitchen knife, a stack of paper plates and another of paper napkins, they had laid out a veritable cold banquet. The chicken salad had stained the green leather that covered the desktop. Plunged into a meatball minus a bite was a little red plastic fork.

“Now you've got the keys just like the man of the house . . .”

Firefly wondered how and from whom Gator had learned that detail.

“At the least,” the reptile continued, “you, sir, ought to smoke a good cigar, don't you think?”

“And sure enough,” Isidro took up the lead voice, “here's one of the finest Romeo y Julietas.”

He broke into a sebaceous giggle.

Gator struck a match and lit the Havana himself, inhaling hard.

“Suck in that smoke!” he ordered. “You've got too much on your mind.”

A snigger.

Firefly was standing next to the desk. He tried with all his strength to say, “I don't want to.” But not a word emerged.

He had no idea why he looked at his feet. They were firmly on the ground, the laces well tied. He thought he heard the tinkling of the cut glass hanging from the dusty old lamp, as happened whenever there was a lot of wind or when disoriented birds,
fleeing the fumigated warehouses of the port, found their way inside.

Unaware how much time had passed, he heard in a dream or echoing over a loudspeaker the inquisitor's stentorian voice: “Here is your cigar.”

Firefly shook his head.

Then the man with scaly skin and bloodshot eyes, loosening his tie and his fly at the same time, as if an urgent need had overcome him, swayed into the office next door and disappeared.

He returned wielding another cigar, this one twisted and greenish. Closing his zipper, he came toward Firefly, his gaze fixed on something nonexistent but vile, like a liquor stain or a yellow smear.

The poor melon-head watched him approach and hid his sweaty hands in his pockets. His knees were trembling and he understood at once that he would not be able to move or speak.

“If you don't want that one,” Gator ordered, putting the Par-tagás Culebra in his own mouth, “then smoke one of these. They're so mild even women like them . . .”

Firefly grabbed hold of the Havana with his two small moist hands; the silky texture and the warmth of the leaves surprised him. He was about to bring the cigar to his lips when the first ash burned his fingers. He blew on them, his eyes full of tears.

“I don't know how to smoke or how to whistle,” he heard himself say. “No one ever taught me.”

“Look,” the scaly one replied, shaking with laughter, “nothing's easier.” And he rubbed his hands together like a mason about to build a wall. “Haven't you ever seen a bat smoke?”
^*

He surged forward, and using thumb and forefinger like a pincer he held the boy's nose. Then he stuffed the cigar in his mouth. The little firefly began to choke.

Isidro was breaking up the bread crumbs left on the tablecloth and devouring them compulsively. He tried to make the doughy ones into figurines, but they all came out grotesque, like ugly big-nosed priests.

The poor buzzing insect managed to breathe in the smoke and cough it out. He clenched his belly, bent toward the floor, tried to throw up. But he could not. His red-rimmed eyes spun out of their orbits.

“Again, dammit!” was the executioner's only response. “Again! Let's see if you can learn!”

Firefly sucked in air. He thought about his sister. He looked around for help.

That was when Isidro, without a word, and with that instantaneous
energy only hatred can produce (had it germinated slowly between them like a miasma, an emanation of deep-seated rivalry or reciprocal envy?), knocked Gator aside with a sharp slap to the face.

The reptile teetered. He grabbed onto a chair. He straightened as if preparing to return the affront. Indignation made his eyes glassy. He looked at the kitchen knife. His right hand trembled for a moment . . . Then he turned toward the door, stepped determinedly through it, and slammed it shut behind him.

Without a glance at Firefly, without any gesture of reproval or satisfaction, and in no hurry, Isidro followed him.

The melon-head was left alone in the cubicle. A sick silence again took hold of everything, an exasperating calm, like after a curse. Or the filth of sex.

Firefly then contemplated the city from another window.

The sky was leprous. Humidity and heat, like acid, had corroded the soaring façades piled upon one another; purple peelings, like scabs or oozing cankers, curled from broken lintels, triangular porticos, and cracked volutes. On the sagging roofs nested seabirds, speckled lizards with spiny tails, raucous macaws, and mesmerized cats, indifferent to the hordes of rodents.

Making his way down the winding cobblestone alleys, amid
the cries of washerwomen and the scurrying of pickpockets and children, was an emaciated blond teenager, long-haired, barefoot, and bearded, wearing a violet-and-gold cape and hauling a wooden cross. With his right hand he held up a sign: crude red letters announced the apocalypse and called on the pope to reveal the prophecies of Fatima.

Heading in the other direction, unperturbed by the prediction, was a stout black man, his muscled chest shining with sweat, as if swathed in dusky silk, under the weight of the casket on his back.

The geometries of windows, semicircular arches held by slight copper frames, stood out in the fractured walls above doorways splayed permanently open. Scarlet, lime-green, mustard, and amethyst windowpanes projected daubs of color onto the tiled floors of darkened rooms, deforming their polished checkerboards of floral motifs and sweeping still lifes.

On one façade, above a trim of broken tiles and alongside a stucco niche containing a hairless and bloodied Christ with slanty eyes – a relic of Macao – a few tarnished gold letters remained.

Clothes floated on lines; flapping in the hot wind that presaged a storm were mended handkerchiefs, yellowing lace bedcovers, silver dresses, dazzling rags fit for welcoming an orisha's descent or for leading a sumptuous procession.

From afar came the sounds of raucous jingle bells, off-key
horns, and damp maracas from some fiesta; a strong aroma wafted in: grated coconut with butterscotch.

Downstairs, Firefly thought he heard something like the stumbling of a drunk. Then the big bolt opening. And the slamming of the door.

The wind blew hard. The rain had begun.

He understood then that
he was expecting someone, but was convinced that no one was going to come
.

^*
So, the prediction returns.

He decided to escape. That morning he took a long look at himself in the mirror, deep into his own eyes. He ran his index finger along the fuzzy shadow above his lips. By now, his bamboo-flute tones were breaking into sudden bass notes that belonged to a voice nothing like his own: that of the someone else he would later become, but who was already keeping watch over him like a resourceful double from the vantage of his future, where all things appear ideal, incorruptible, until the present devours them.

He could make no sense of the reality around him. Such murkiness was lethal. The intrigue of the inexplicable visits, but one example of the pervasive darkness, threatened him like a daily warning blown his way by the Toothless One.

Suddenly one afternoon, like just before an earthquake, everything fell silent. The sky turned into a gray metal plate, insufferably heavy, that seemed to keep watch, mirrorlike.

The goldfish, as if struck by an electric current, jumped in unison out of the pond and did full somersaults on the cement floor up to the foot of the ceiba tree. As fast as he could, Firefly collected them and tossed them, still covered in dirt, back into the water. Though slowly, some of them began to swim again, seeming half asleep; others floated belly-up, shaken by brief spasms. Firefly scolded them, threatening famine, nets, feral cats, and he pushed them about with his cupped hands.

It was useless.

They lay at the edge, motionless except for a slight bobbing on the puny green-specked waves, lockjawed.

Firefly picked them up again, this time frantically. He dropped them into the deep holes where the lizards nest, down among the big strong roots of the ceiba.

The iron knocker on the main door rang out.

Munificence was waiting in the first-floor pantry with a tray of meringues, still warm, that she herself had painstakingly whipped and baked all morning long and whose whitish and satiny-wet appearance made them look more like the spiral excrement of a brooding hen than the refined output of a swanky patisserie.

She left the tray on a small round table and went to open the door.

It was two witches.

Each was enveloped in wrinkled, austere, uniform black, to which they had added black-and-white checkered headscarves whose ends draped like flexible chessboards around their necks and down their backs.

Crowning this cloak of armor was the unequivocal emblem of iniquity: mirrored sunglasses, which in place of the observing gaze return the intrigued spectator's own questioning image, miniaturized to reflect the true dimensions of his self-importance, just to bring him down a peg.

The two mourners, however, were quite distinct: complementary inverse omens of danger. Or better yet: snakes, which though already sated, suck on each other, perhaps to replenish their poisons. The one who entered first was stout and striking; despite her somber attire, around her hips garlands of lusty fat stood out, and jutting from under her kerchief were three decreasing rows of plump double chins. The other, on the contrary, was a long tall drink of water, her headscarf held in place by an intricate onyx brooch in the shape of two leaves of holly, which clawed at the fabric like a crab. As for her shoes, it looked like a frightened lizard had wrapped itself around her feet.

They mounted the stairs at full tilt without tripping or taking in the mess on the first floor, as if they already knew the ins and outs of the place. Munificence led the way, plate of meringues in hand, making Versailles-esque gestures and flustered excuses about the perpetual disorder that reigns among men of the law.