The Cigar Roller Page 8

  Amadeo doesn’t know if he is awake or asleep, if he is dreaming or fantasizing or dreaming his fantasy. In his next dream he sits on a throne holding a huge basket of rotting fruit on his lap which fills the air around him with flies. He wants one of the servants to take the fruit away but they are otherwise occupied and no matter how hard he tries to get their attention they walk by him as if he didn’t exist. Without a voice he cannot command them; without strength in his arms he is unable to lift the basket, which soon, on its own, slides off his lap. The servants ignore him still but he is glad to be rid of the weight that was pinning him down. In the next part of the dream he sees that his groin is crawling with rabbits. They are coming out of his britches, jumping onto the floor and hopping in every direction. Then Julia appears in front of him as a very old woman carrying Albertico. His arm is hanging down and his head is leaning against Julia’s chest. Amadeo is desperate to see the boy’s face, but when Albertico turns it toward him, it is covered with large black spiders. A door closes and Amadeo wakes up. Whenever he remembers this dream he feels like he is sweating from the inside. Now more than ever, he would like to stand and walk away into sun so hot, ice so cold he will lose the memory of that day. Out the window the sky is hazy white and far off over the ocean a dark cloud is threatening rain. The water is choppy and gray. Something is about to break open, and to allay his anxiety he starts to count blinks. He reaches thirty, then goes to fifty and continues to one hundred. Beyond that each blink gets increasingly difficult, and he wants to stop but he fights the urge and continues counting. At two hundred his eyelids weigh on his eyeballs as if they were made of lead. The instinct is to keep them closed but he forces them open each time, using all his concentration to keep from losing count. By three hundred fifty his eyeballs are dry, the lids scraping against them like sandpaper. He counts past five hundred, an excruciating number. At seven hundred he reaches a wide, level expanse where effort becomes ease and by one thousand it doesn’t feel like counting at all. Later, at around fourteen or fifteen hundred, he hears a noise like a large door closing every time the lids swivel over the ball of his eyes. Light, dark, light, dark, each number defining one or the other in the narrow straight line of arithmetic, after which blinking finally stops and the eye is an orb in a numberless universe. He knows he is not there yet. All that progression, all that movement forward to seventeen hundred and beyond where blinking loses purpose and sight is the same as non-sight. He stops and focuses on Sor Diminuta who is looking at him with great concern. Mr. Terra, she says. Mr. Terra, he hears her calling from a great distance. Amadeo tries to reassure her by blinking but his eyes are fixed on the open position and no effort on his part will force them closed. He wants to make love to her again, he wants to lift her habit and open her coffers, smell that loba smell of hers. He wants this not to be a dream. Julia intrudes, carrying Albertico, and the rabbits leaping out of his groin.

  In Tampa, when Albertico was seven, he and Julia played a game in which he gave her a word and she would have to find another word within it. In perro she found pero; in lengua she found auge; in nariz she found raíz. It was a good game and Albertico used to get so worked up sometimes he would wet his pants: arroz, zorra; frijol, fijo; caballo, bala; traje, teja; árbol, labor. No matter what word Albertico thought up, Julia would find the one hidden inside. Amadeo tried reversing roles once and Albertico stumped him with the first word he gave him: bobo. There is always a word hidden inside another, Julia said, and you will always find the sound of it inside yourself. She never told him what the hidden word was inside bobo, and he has just discovered it: bobo. The hidden word is the word itself.

  Sor Diminuta is leaning over him, her face so close to his he can smell her breath—tea with cardamom. She has a long, delicate neck, she has corrugated nipples, she has freckles on her chest, she has a mole in the middle of her back he can feel when she straddles him. But that’s Julia’s mole. Her mother had it and her grandfather before that, a family mark. It feels like a bloated tick, he said. Don’t touch it, she said. Hard not to when you’re sitting on top of me. We won’t do that anymore, she said. But you like it, he said. Sometimes, she said, raising herself up by her arms and grinding herself into him in a circular motion until she screamed.

  I’m counting blinks, Sor Diminuta. Why? It keep things moving, keeps the mind floating. I’ve spent my whole life counting. You must be good at it, she says. As good as you are at praying. Sor Diminuta takes a damp towel and pats his forehead. Wild dog, that’s what my wife called me. Perro salvaje. He looks up at her sideways: the face is not the nun’s but his mother’s and he is burning with fever. Behind her, illumined by candlelight, is someone he does not recognize. She is dressed in black and is holding a prayer book and has been in the room ever since he got the fever. A doctor comes and shakes his head. His father at the door, other people bustling in and out. A priest anoints him, speaking in Latin. Next thing he knows it is morning and the lady who held the prayer book is opening the windows, letting in the fresh warm air and the sounds of the barnyard. Sor Diminuta says she is leaving. Wild dog, he does not want her to leave, he wags his tail. Stay, stay, he stands on his rear legs pawing her arms. He drops down on all fours and runs twice around her barking. Wild dog, wild dog, soul coming out of him, a blur of brown habit flying out the door.

  On his days off Amadeo spends hours looking at Julia’s garden. To the right of the yard against the fence she has planted morning glories that twirl about the poles in great profusion. In the morning the purple and white blossoms open to the sun and draw hummingbirds by the dozen. Along the other fence there are red and white roses the size of a man’s fist and closer to the house is a gardenia bush that perfumes the air at dusk. Squarely in the middle, to the left of the path that leads to the outhouse, Julia has her vegetable plot. Depending on the year, she plants tomatoes, squash, corn, large green peppers, radishes the size of lemons, and always, without fail, calabazas and yuca. There are insects buzzing around her in the morning sunlight—bumblebees and white and yellow butterflies—and the occasional garter snake crawling through the grass, which she is repelled by but refuses to kill because it brings bad luck. This is as close to paradise as he’ll ever get, and he watches from the kitchen window as she prunes her plants and weeds the ground around them. She has grown stout in Tampa, but her face, shaded by the large straw hat she wears when she is out in the sun, is still angular and well defined. He can see the sweat moistening the back of her dress. She will take a break soon, come inside, pour herself a glass of water from the clay water pot by which he is standing, and go back to finish her work. Just before noon she comes in for good, her face flushed from the heat and a satisfied look in her eyes. Amadeo will want to make love to her then but will not bring it up, aware after fifteen years of marriage of the special nature of her moods. Neither of them will speak because there is no need. He feels drawn towards her as she is drawn to him by a force akin to gravity which goes beyond the moment and will keep the two of them together for many years despite the days of exhaustion, the days of acrimony, and the days of despair. How long have you been married, people will ask. Fifteen, he will joke, but it feels like one hundred fifty. Julia will give him one of her looks and he will smile at her and shrug his shoulders. He watches as she washes her hands in the sink with a jagged chunk of castile soap and scrubs them with a piece of estropajo until her skin is red. Want some coffee, she asks him and he says yes even though he just had some because this gives them more time together. The tomatoes are almost ready, she says, washing out the water pot. I don’t mind them green, he says. I’ll cut one up for dinner then. She scoops the coffee from a can into the cloth filter the Cubans call a teta because it tapers to a point and is roughly the shape of a breast. The teta hangs from a stand made of tin under which sits a large metal cup. We’re having jaibas. Jaibas, Amadeo says. You have to be careful with them this time of year. Where did you get them? Raul the fishmonger came by early today with a bushel he caught this
morning. Did you look at the gills? Yes, and the claws are still snapping. They’re in the icebox. Enchilado de jaiba, he says. I invited Padre Alonso. Coño, Amadeo says. That priest is forever getting in the way. That priest is our friend, Amadeo. If it weren’t for him Rubén would be in jail. He might as well be, Amadeo says with disgust, and his mood changes in a flash. Ese cura es maricñn. That priest is seventy-five years old and worthy of our respect, Julia says. He’s never done anything to harm you. That we know of. What do you mean, she asks. She has forgotten about the water and the pot boils over. She takes a kitchen towel and lifts the pot off the stove, pouring the water through the teta. When the coffee is done dripping, she serves two demitasses from the large cup and sits at the table. Rubén has never been the same since he started going over to the parish house for catechism lessons. That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. I won’t have you saying those things under my roof. Our roof, mi amor, Amadeo says. Lately, the arguments have been all too frequent. He worries about this, but not enough to stop this one. He swallows his coffee in one gulp and stands. He’s an old faggot. Julia throws the kitchen towel on the table and storms out. Amadeo is momentarily satisfied but cannot tell if he has won or lost the argument. No doubt Father Alonso will come tonight, spouting a myriad beatitudes and spoiling Amadeo’s dinner and anything else he might have had in mind.

  Priests, Amadeo thinks, and is reminded of the one who comes by his room acting like Pope Leo XIII himself and gives him communion, which he takes not out of any sense of devotion but because it allows him to swallow something solid. He cannot recall what happened the day of the jaiba dinner but he remembers the day Father Alonso was run out of town. It was the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, after the schools closed for the year. In those days right after the War of ’95 strikes became common in Ibor City, at least one or two a year. There was the Weight-Scale Strike, the Piece-Work Strike, the Chinchal Strike, and others that had no name and happened simply because workers and management despised each other. Families survived for weeks, sometimes months, on nothing but rice pudding and watery soup. A group of men had gathered outside the Príncipe de Gales factory after a walkout vote Amadeo had led when Pedro Fleitas, a sorter at the Hoyos factory down the street, appeared out of nowhere and said he was on his way to kill the priest. The men sat him down, brought him a glass of water, and when he had settled down they asked him why, to which Pedro Fleitas answered that the priest was conspiring with the owners to undermine the strike. What makes you say that, Amadeo asked. Pedro’s right leg shook nervously whenever he spoke. He would stammer at first, then his words came out in a great rush. I . . . I . . . he, Pedro said. He came out of the Martínez Ibor house this morning shaking the hand of Martínez. So what, Amadeo said. He was filled with confidence now that he had won the vote. The other rollers looked up to him. He . . . he . . . Pedro’s leg was shaking wildly. He kept trying to steady it with his hand but the limb had a mind of its own. He said at Mass today that it was a mortal sin to go on strike. Amadeo laughed. That would put every cigar worker in Ibor on the straight route to hell. Who listens to priests, anyway? The women, said one of the other men. My . . . my . . . my, Pedro tried to say. Martica said she won’t have sex with me while I’m not working. Maybe now you’ll stop having children, someone else said. Pedro had seven children and his wife Martica was pregnant with the eighth. When the men got home that night they realized that Pedro’s story was true. Their wives withdrew their intimacies with a determination that bordered on pious fervor. After a week, the men’s syndicalist convictions wavered, and after fourteen days the strike fell apart as one by one the workers, including Amadeo himself, lumbered back to work. That was when two of them paid the priest a visit. What was said behind the closed doors of the sacristy, Amadeo never learned. That night someone broke all the stained-glass windows in the church and by morning the priest had packed up his bags and left Ibor. For a while rumors circulated as to where he had gone, but it was not until a year later that he was found dead in a fishing shack on Duck Key. Perhaps Pedro Fleitas finally got to him or the police were right and he had killed himself.

  When she heard of Padre Alonso’s death, Julia was outraged, claiming the men in the factory had driven the priest crazy. Amadeo was about to say that he got what he deserved but he had a bad headache, like the ones he got when it thundered. He let Julia calm down and changed the conversation to the sow he and Chano were fattening for Christmas. You haven’t slaughtered a pig in your life, Julia said. Joaquín the grocer is doing it, Amadeo said, for a bottle of rum. Give him the rum after he kills it, Julia said. Remember when he showed up drunk to kill the González’s sow and missed the artery? Amadeo remembers. The pig escaped and ran circles around the neighborhood, spilling its blood and squealing like the devil. Margarito, who lived across the street, tried to shoot it and instead wounded the animal, which only made more blood. It was Noche Buena. Everyone had drunk too much. The pig eventually disappeared into the brush and no one ever found it. Like Padre Alonso, Amadeo thinks. That big sow.

  The morning of the stroke Amadeo was wearing his white linen suit, a red tie and tan shoes. On his head he had a brand-new panama hat and on his pinky a gold opal ring he had bought the day he decided never to show his misery to anyone, no matter how willing they might be to show him theirs. It was the first cool day of the fall and he was on his way to the Columbia Restaurant to have his morning coffee and a cigar. He’d sit next to Giacobo Bombo, the mafia boss, and they would talk about game cocks, the situation in Cuba with Carlos Prío, the new president, and other things they were fond of discussing. Never money. Never women. Only young men talk about those things. Then it happened. The first person to come to Amadeo was a street urchin who tried to take his ring, and when he couldn’t pull it off, he ran off with his gold watch. The second was a policeman, a relative of Chano whom they called la Bestia for his brute strength and his ruthless treatment of suspected criminals. He tried to lift a limp Amadeo to his feet to no avail. The Beast went in search of help and when he returned, a group had gathered around Amadeo asking him questions which, of course, he could not answer. By that point he knew that he would never move or speak again and that his life was, for all intents and purposes, over. He had gone from one plane of existence to another in a fraction of a second. In one he was healthy and thriving. In the other he was a mound of useless flesh. The Beast dispersed the crowd, which included several friends of Julia from the old days who bent over him trying to gauge the extent of his condition. He heard one of them say, He finally got what he deserved, and he wanted to say back, vieja puta, to the old bitch, but he was glued to the pavement and his throat was rigid like concrete.

  Amadeo blinks. Something different about today. The room is filled with amber light. The clown’s downturned mouth seems cheery and the snowy mountains have lost their melancholy air. The dresser on the far wall has the glow of a self-sufficient object. Without it the walls would fall, the window would shatter, the floor would open and Amadeo would be sucked into the center of the earth. Once the drawers held his clothes, brought by his sons on the recommendation of Nurse. It is good, she’d said, for him to have his things near him. He’ll feel more at home that way. Not long after, it became obvious that Amadeo would never be leaving his room, that he would never see the objects they had so eagerly placed in the dresser drawers, and that he didn’t seem to be responding in any way to the kindness suggested to and acted upon by his officious sons. Even if he’d blinked yes a hundred times, they would not know what he was assenting to. The clothes had grown moldy and stale in their disuse and at some point an attendant had been dispatched to take them away. Now the dresser stands resplendent in its obsolescence. Amadeo cannot tell if he’s been awake a long time and he has just fallen asleep or if he has never fallen asleep and this is merely the continuation of an eternal condition from which he will never wake: he and the dresser facing each other but unable to tell each other their stories. Furniture doesn’t think. H
uman beings do. Yet even as he denies the possibility of the dresser thinking, he realizes that Nurse, Nurse II, Orderly, and all the others who look on him have concluded that he is devoid of thought. Just because an object does not exhibit any movement does not mean that it cannot think. It stands to reason that if he is capable of thought so might the dresser be. If the dresser thinks, then, what does it think about? Its emptiness? Its lack of purpose? Does it remember the days when it was full and useful, ready to serve its masters with its bounty of shirts, socks, pajamas, and underwear, hiding in its depths the most important documents, the dearest photographs, the most intimate correspondence? Is it ever content? Does it long for company like Amadeo or lust after Sor Diminuta or Nurse? It is dressed in light veneer and has knobs for handles. Once it had a mirror over it, but they took that away along with his clothes. When does a dresser stop being a dresser? Is it still one even though its drawers are empty of clothes, or is dresserhood independent of functionality? Is he, Amadeo Terra, no longer a human being because he performs no useful function? Presence is essence, Amadeo asserts. Dresser and Amadeo are both present in the room, filled with potential and essential to each other. The dresser affirms him as he affirms the dresser. Outside the room is irrelevant, might as well be another planet, another universe. He and dresser together, forever. The argument is a perfect tautological circle, and if it breaks, consciousness breaks as well. It is the kind of thinking, derived from some obscure philosopher or other, that would make Chano proud.