Mona and Other Tales (6 page)

I thought it was best to obey my future boss, and I went to bed alone, though, of course, I did not intend to sleep. Awake but snoring lightly, I observed her discreetly. She walked back and forth in my studio for over two hours while mumbling unintelligible gibberish. I could make out “the inventors . . . the interpreters” at one point. Though I am not even sure of that, for Elisa was talking faster and faster, and her pace seemed to keep rhythm with her words. Finally she took off her splendid dress and went out the window, naked, onto the fire escape. With her hands uplifted and her head tilted back, as if in position to receive an extraordinary gift from the skies (now gray and overcast), she remained outside on the landing for hours, indifferent to the cold and even to a freezing drizzle, which was getting heavier. About one in the afternoon she came back in and, “waking” me, said she needed to go do some work in the mountain town we had visited. It seemed she had to take some photos representing the region.

Soon on our way, we got there before dusk. The streets were deserted or, rather, filled with mounds of purple leaves, which moved in eddies from place to place. We stayed at the same hotel (or motel) as before; it was so quiet, we seemed to be its only guests. Before dark we went out into town, and she began to take some photos of houses still in the light. (If I appear in some of those photos, it's because she asked me to pose for her.) We went to the restaurant that reminded me of La Bodeguita del Medio. I noticed that Elisa had a ravenous appetite. Without losing her elegant composure, she downed several portions of soup, pasta, cream sauce, roast, bread, and dessert, besides two bottles of wine. Then she asked me to take her for a walk. The streets were narrow and badly lit, and after coming out of a place that so resembled La Bodeguita del Medio, it seemed as if I were back in Havana during my last years there. But what most brought me back to those days was a sensation of fear, of terror, even, which seemed to emanate from every corner and every object, including our own bodies. Night had fallen, and though there was no moon, there was a radiant luminosity in the sky. The usual evening fog enveloped everything, even ourselves, in a gray mist that blurred all silhouettes. Finally we reached a yellowish esplanade, which no car seemed to have crossed ever before. Elisa was walking ahead with all her equipment. The road narrowed and disappeared between dim promontories that looked like tapering, greenish rocks. Or like withered cypresses linked by a strange viscosity. On the other side of the promontories we came upon a lake, also greenish and covered by the same nebulous vegetation. Elisa deposited her expensive equipment on the ground and looked at me. As she talked, her face, her hair, and her hands seemed to glow.

“Il veleno de la conoscenza é una della tante calamitá di cui
so fre l'essere umano,”
she said, her eyes fixed on me.
“Il veleno
della conoscenza o al meno quello della curiositá.”
⁸

“I don't understand a word,” I blurted out in all sincerity.

“Well, I want you to understand. I have never killed anybody without first telling him why.”

“Who are you going to kill?” I asked her with a smile, to let her know I was not taking her words seriously.

“Listen to me, you fool,” she said, stepping away from me while I, pretending not to understand, tried to embrace her. “I know everything you did. Your trips to the museum, your incessant surveillance, your detective work. Your pretended snoring did not fool me either. Of course, until now your stupidity and your cowardice have prevented you from seeing things as they are. Let me help you. There is no difference between what you saw in the painting at the museum and me. We are one and the same thing.”

I must confess that it was impossible for me then to assimilate Elisa's words. I asked her to explain in simpler language, still hoping it was all a joke or the effect of the two bottles of wine.

After she repeated the same explanation several times, I finally got an idea of what she meant. The woman in the painting and Elisa were one and the same. As long as the painting existed, she, Elisa, would exist too. But for the picture to exist, she had, of course, to be there. That is, whenever the museum was open, she had to remain there inside the picture—“smiling, impassive, and radiant,” as she put it, with a tinge of irony. Once the museum was closed, she could get out and have her amorous escapades like the ones I had participated in. “Encounters with men, the handsomest men I can find,” she explained, looking at me, and in spite of my dangerous situation, I could not help but experience some feelings of vanity. . . . “But all those men,” continued Elisa, “cannot simply
enjoy;
they want to
know,
and they end up like you, with a vague idea of my peculiar condition. Then the persecution begins. They want to know who I am, no matter what the cost; they want to know everything. And in the end, I have to eliminate them. . . .” Elisa paused for a moment and, glaring at me, continued: “Yes, I like men, and very much, because I am also a man, as well as a genius!” She said this looking at me, and I could see that her anger was mounting; realizing I was facing a dangerous madwoman, I decided it was best to “go with her flow” (as we used to say in Havana), and, begging her to control herself, I asked her to tell me about her sex change. “After all,” I tried to console her, “New York is full of transvestites, and they don't look so unhappy. . . .” Completely ignoring my words, she explained to me: Not only was Elisa the woman in the painting, but the woman in the painting was also the painter, who had done his self-portrait as he wished to be (the way he was in his mind): a lusty, fascinating woman. But his real triumph was not that he portrayed himself as an alluring woman. “That,” she said with scorn, “had already been done by most painters.” His true achievement was that through a mustering of energy, genius, and mental concentration—which, she claimed, were unknown in our century—the woman he painted had the ability to become the painter himself and to outlive him. This person (she? he?) would then exist as long as the painting existed, and had the power, when nobody was present, to step out of the painting and escape into the crowds. And in this way she was able to find sexual gratification with the kind of men that the painter, as a man not graced by beauty, had never been able to get.
“But
the power of concentration I must muster to achieve all that does
not come easily. And now, after almost five hundred years, I sometimes lose the perfection of my physical attributes or even one of my
parts, as you on several occasions were astonished to see but could
not believe.”

In brief, I was facing a man over five hundred years old who had transformed himself into a woman and also existed as a painting. The situation would have been truly hilarious were it not for the fact that, at that point, Elisa drew from her bodice an ancient dagger, sharp and glimmering nonetheless.

I tried to disarm her, but in vain. With only one hand she overpowered me, and in an instant I was on the ground, the dagger before my eyes. Crouching, and imprisoned under Elisa's legs, I still was able to identify the landscape around us. It was exactly the same as in the famous (and now, for me, accursed) painting at the museum. Something sinister was indeed going on, though I could not determine its extent. Elisa—I will keep calling her Elisa until the end of this report—made me move along in my crouched position until we reached the lakeshore. Once there, I saw it was not a lake but a swamp. This was obviously the place, I thought, where she sacrificed her surely numerous indiscreet lovers.

The alternatives Elisa seemed to be offering me were equally frightful: to die either drowned in that swamp or pierced by the dagger. Or perhaps she had both in mind. Again she fixed her gaze on me, and I understood that my end was near. I started to cry. Elisa took off her clothes. I continued crying. It was not my family in Cuba that I remembered at that moment but the enormous salad bar at Wendy's. To me it was like a vision of my life these last few years (fresh, pleasant, surrounded by people, and problem-free), before Elisa came into it. Meanwhile she lay naked in the mud.

“Let it not be said,” she muttered, barely moving her lips, “that we are not parting on the best of terms.”

And beckoning me to join her, she kept smiling in her peculiar way, lips almost closed.

I couldn't stop crying, but I came closer. Still holding the dagger, she placed her hand behind my head, quickly aligning her naked body with mine. She did this with such speed, professionalism, and violence that I realized it would be very difficult for me to come out of that embrace alive. I am sure that in all my long erotic experience, never has my performance been so lustful and tender, so skillful and passionate, because in all truth, even knowing she intended to kill me, I still lusted for her. By her third orgasm, while she was still panting and uttering the most obscene words, Elisa had not only forgotten the dagger but become oblivious of herself. I noticed she apparently was losing the concentration and energy that, as she said, enabled her to become a real woman. Her eyes were becoming opaque, her face was losing its color, her cheekbones were melting away. Suddenly her luscious hair dropped from her head, and I found myself in the arms of a very old, bald man, toothless and foul-smelling, who kept whimpering while slobbering on my penis. Quickly he sat on it, riding it as if he were a true demon. I quickly put him on all fours and, in spite of my revulsion, tried to give him as much pleasure as I could, hoping he would be so exhausted he would let me go. Since I had never practiced sodomy, I wanted to keep the illusion, even remotely, that this horrible thing, this sack of bones with the ugliest of beards, was still Elisa. So while I possessed him, I kept calling him by that name. But he, in the middle of his paroxysm, turned and looked at me; his eyes were two empty reddish sockets.

“Call me Leonardo, damn it! Call me Leonardo!” he shouted, while writhing and groaning with such pleasure as I have never seen in a human being.

“Leonardo!” I began repeating, then, while I possessed him. “Leonardo!” I repeated as I kept penetrating that pestiferous mound. “Leonardo,” I kept whispering tenderly, while with a quick jump I got hold of the dagger; then, flailing my arms, I escaped as fast as I could through the yellow esplanade. “Leonardo! Leonardo!” I was still shouting when I jumped onto my motorcycle and dashed away at full speed. “Leonardo! Leonardo! Leonardo!” I think I kept saying, still in a panic, all the way back to New York, as if repeating the name might serve as an incantation to appease that lecherous old man still writhing at the edge of the swamp he himself had painted.

I was sure that Leonardo, Elisa, or “that thing” was not dead.

Even more, I think I'd managed to do no harm at all to it. And if I did, would a single stab be enough to destroy all the horror that had managed to prevail for over five hundred years and included not only Elisa but the swamp, the sandy road, the rocks, the town, and even the ghostly mist that covered it all?

That night I slept in the home of my friend the Cuban writer Daniel Sakuntala.
⁹
I told him I had problems with a woman and did not want to sleep with her in my apartment. Without giving him any more details, I presented him with the dagger, which he was able to appreciate as the precious jewel it was. Would it solve any problem, I wondered, if I told him of my predicament? Would he believe me?
¹⁰
Right now, only two days away from my imminent demise, when there is no way out for me, I am telling my story mainly as an act of pure desperation and as my last hope, because nothing else is left for me to do. At least for now, I realize how very difficult it is for anyone to believe all this. Anyway, before the little time I have left runs out, let me continue.

Of course I did not, even remotely, consider going back to my room, terrified as I was by the possibility of finding Elisa there. I was sure of only one thing: she was looking for me, and still is, in order to kill me. This is what my own instinct, my experience of fear and persecution, are telling me (and don't forget I lived twenty years in Cuba).

For three days I roamed the streets without knowing what to do and, naturally, without being able to sleep. On Wednesday night I showed up again at Daniel's. I was shaking, not only out of fear but because I was running a fever. Maybe I had caught the flu, or something worse, during the time I was out on the streets.

Daniel behaved like a real friend, perhaps the only one I had and, I believe, still have. He prepared something for me to eat and hot tea, made me take two aspirins, and even gave me some syrupy potion.
¹¹
Finally, after so many nights of insomnia, I fell asleep. I dreamed, of course, of Elisa. Her cold eyes were looking at me from a corner of the room. Suddenly that corner became the strange landscape with the promontories of greenish rocks around a swamp. By the swamp, Elisa was waiting for me. Her eyes were fixed on mine, her hands elegantly entwined below her chest. She kept looking at me with detached perversity, and her look was a command to get closer and embrace her right at the edge of the swamp. . . . I dragged myself there. She placed her hands on my head and pulled me down close to her. As I possessed her, I sensed that I was penetrating not even an old man but a mound of mud. The enormous and pestiferous mass slowly engulfed me while it kept expanding, splattering heavily and becoming more foul-smelling. I screamed as this viscous thing swallowed me, but my screams only produced a dull gurgling sound. I felt my skin and my bones being sucked away by the mass of mud, and once inside it, I became mud, finally sinking into the swamp.

My own screams woke me up so suddenly that I still had time to see Daniel sucking my member. He pretended it wasn't so and withdrew to the opposite side of the bed, making believe he was asleep, but I understood I could not stay there either. I got up, made some coffee, thanked Daniel for his hospitality and allowing me to sleep in his apartment, borrowed twenty dollars from him, and left.
¹²