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Fiction-Online Volume 5 Number 1
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FICTION-ONLINE
An Internet Literary Magazine
Volume 5, Number 1
January-February, 1998
EDITOR'S NOTE:
FICTION-ONLINE is a literary magazine publishing
electronically through e-mail and the Internet on a bimonthly basis.
The contents include short stories, play scripts or excerpts, excerpts
of novels or serialized novels, and poems. Some contributors to the
magazine are members of the Northwest Fiction Group of
Washington, DC, a group affiliated with Washington Independent
Writers. However, the magazine is an independent entity and solicits
and publishes material from the public.
To subscribe or unsubscribe or for more information, please e-mail
a brief request to
ngwazi@clark.net
To submit manuscripts for consideration, please e-mail to the
same address, with the ms in ASCII format, if possible included as
part of the message itself, rather than as an attachment.
Back issues of the magazine may be obtained by e-mail from
the editor or by anonymous ftp (or gopher) from
ftp.etext.org
where issues are filed in the directory
/pub/Zines/ASCII/Fiction_Online. This same directory may also be
located with your browser at the corresponding website
http://www.etext.org
The FICTION-ONLINE home page, courtesy of the Writer's
Center, Bethesda, Maryland, may be accessed at the following URL:
http://www.writer.org/folmag/topfollm.htm
COPYRIGHT NOTICE: The copyright for each piece of
material published is retained by its author. Each subscriber is
licensed to possess one electronic copy and to make one hard copy for
personal reading use only. All other rights, including rights to copy
or publish in whole or in part in any form or medium, to give readings
or to stage performances or filmings or video recording, or for any
other use not explicitly licensed, are reserved.
William Ramsay, Editor
=================================================
CONTENTS
Editor's Note
Contributors
"Meeting of Eyes," a poem
W. R. Hastings
"Marajo (part 1)," a long story
Charles Maxwell
"Valeska," an excerpt (chapter 6) from
the novel "Ay, Chucho!"
William Ramsay
"L'Amour, l' amore," part 4 of the play, "Duet"
Otho Eskin
=================================================
CONTRIBUTORS
OTHO ESKIN, former diplomat and consultant on international
affairs, has published short stories and has had numerous plays read
and produced in Washington, notably "Act of God." His play "Duet"
has been produced at the Elizabethan Theater at the Folger Library in
Washington, and is being performed with some regularity in theaters
in the United States, Europe, and Australia.
W. R. HASTINGS is an attorney and a former government official.
He now lives in the Berkshires , where he gardens, investigates
aerodynamics, and writes poetry. His works have been published in
leading journals.
CHARLES MAXWELL, formerly in the retail clothing business in
the Rocky Mountain states, is now a mining engineer in northern
Sasketchewan, where he writes stories and plays chess by
correspondence.
WILLIAM RAMSAY is a physicist and consultant on Third World
energy problems. He is also a writer and the coordinator of the
Northwest Fiction Group. His play, "Strength," recently received a
reading at the Writers Center in Bethesda, Maryland.
=================================================
MEETINGS OF EYES
by W. R. Hastings
Freefalling willfully into the open canyons
between us reveals our invisible links
just as the chill inside, when we
feel like an empty kettle on a cold stove,
heats our hearts' response.
It's the crying out loudly and with eyes that
binds together the solitary breaths
which for every one of us will open and
close each day, just like the day before.
Here may be the reason small fish
travel together in ecstatic schools and
why tall grasses bend down in chorus
before the wind that signals rain and
why the laughter in her eyes
drives him far beyond just knowing.
Welcome! We are all at home,
isolated here in our city of ordinary life
where nothing can fill the body as fully as
noises erupting from meetings of eyes.
===========================================
MARAJO (Part 1)
by Charles Maxwell
When I was a girl in Brazil, I lived in a world bathed in magic.
Even at the age of seven I understood clearly that some magic was
good, a shining magic of lights and colors -- the bright white stucco
walls of the town square shimmering against the black sky of an
approaching storm, the green and red ribbons dangling down from the
clay horse my older brother Simon and I smashed open on my
birthday. But I also saw my life touched by bad magic, like the tiny
doll under the maid's bed, with stick arms and legs, a long steel pin
jabbed through its cotton wool breast. I had frightening dreams about
dog-faced monsters and witches with claws for nails. But I knew one
thing: if some creature from the world of bad magic ever did threaten
me, I could always run to my father for help.
It turned out that when the bad magic did come, I wasn't able
to run to him -- he had to come to me.
I remember knowing that someday my father would become
president. President of the United States, or of California, or of some
country -- like Scotland -- that lay hidden on the other side of the
sharp blue line where the ocean was swallowed away by the pale
Atlantic sky. I'd watch him sitting reading in the green rocker on the
veranda of our house in Belem. Tall and lanky, his nose like an
eagle's beak, he would wrinkle his high forehead as he stretched the
flimsy pages of "O Diario" stiffly in front of him and peered,
frowning, at something new he would be learning about the world.
We only been there from the States a little over a year, and I could
read a lot (I thought) in English -- he had taught me -- but the
Portuguese words in the newspaper were like a secret code that he
understood but I didn't. Sometimes I'd ask him what "Homem
Assassinado" or "Mulher Violada" or something meant, and he'd put
me up on his lap and tell me about interesting things like murders and
wars or about things I knew even adults thought were boring, like
street repairs and bridge club meetings. He knew practically
everything about anything I could think of, and he would put down
his paper, staring past my eyes as he listened intently to my
questions. I would ask him lots of things: why some people were
black and others white and some in-between -- or why the
bougainvilleas in the patio were red and not yellow and why an
orchid had such a funny chopped-up shape as if somebody had torn a
pretty flower up and then forgotten how to put it back together again.
In those days my mother often had a cold or trouble with her
back or something she called "lady's complaints," and many mornings
after my father had gone to work, when I'd knock on her bedroom
door in the morning, she'd say, "I'm still sleeping, Tina. Go away."
Then if Simon happened to be studying his algebra or something with
our governess, old hawkface Miss Potter, the cleaning maid Gloria
would put on her red sateen dress and take me down to the cool green
gardens in the Praca do Carmo where she would walk me along,
pulling my hand so hard that it hurt when I tried to stop and look at
things -- like a red-throated lizard or a ten-Cruzeiro piece someone
had dropped. Some days when it didn't rain and the sun flickered
blindingly in the wavelets of the Baia de Guaraja, she would take me
all the way around the esplanade to where the Guama and Acara
rivers flowed into the Rio do Para. On the other side of the wide,
sea-like Para we could see the giant island of Marajo and the beginning of
the thin line of dark yellow sand that curled around to the other side
of the island and the main channel of the Amazon. Gloria told me
stories about Marajo, where the gods of the jungle lived, the lords of
umbanda, who tore out the hearts and livers of children and burned
them in gigantic fires whose hot flying embers swirled up to the stars.
Simon said Gloria was torta, cockeyed, and that she didn't know
anything. But he was only nine and she was a grown-up and a
Brazilian, with lots of African blood, which I knew made her
naturally wise. Sometimes I used to see wisps of smoke trailing
above the island, and I could imagine what was happening out there.
Some sunny mornings, Simon and I would climb over the
back wall, scampering ahead of the Miss Potter's clomping footsteps,
fleeing the daylong hours of her lisping lessons in English, arithmetic,
or "deportment." Once her nasal cries of "Chil-DREN! chil-DREN!"
had faded to a murmur, we would gallivant along idly, prancing,
skipping, usually ending up among the crowded stalls of the Ver-o-Peso
market on the Avenida Castilhos Franca, where the downtown met the bay.
My brother used to dare me to race him down the long dark aisles in the
large iron market building, our footsteps echoing
metallically toward the whining shouts and oily odors of the fish
stalls. Hopping across the gaps in the wooden gangway over the
puddle-dotted earthen floor, we would sidle in among piles of stained
and overripe-smelling boxes, eyeing the flounder and cod and squid
and the great musky dark, bony slabs of pirarucu filets. We especially
loved Senhor Peres' stall. And particularly the oversize galvanized
iron tub that often displayed a mero, an ocean fish the size of a
sheep, its bugged-out eyes looking blindly out of the ball-like head
that bulged at the cheeks and over the temples. "It's looking right at
you!" Simon would say, and I would squint my eyes so that I
wouldn't be able to see it very well. But finally I wouldn't be able to
resist opening them wide, and there the fish's eyes were, staring at me
like lost "bluey" marbles.
But it was odd, once I had looked it was hard to pull my gaze
away from those cellophane-looking eyes with their layers of bluish-hazy film.
The mero would look ferocious but sad, as if he were pouting about his fate,
landing up in a fish stall, far from the blue-green sea, imprisoned inside
the gray tin walls of the Ver-o-Peso. I would imagine that he was crying for
his wife and his baby merinhos, still swimming gobble-mouthed through the
murky flotsam-speckled depths of the sea far beyond Marajo and the swirling
delta of the Amazon.
"It'll jump down and eat you up!" shouted Simon -- making me
shivery and then ashamed. The scaly-backed, bumpy-faced fish did
look awesome in his slimy massiveness, like some fat, somberly
robed priest or monsignor. Or maybe like a president.
One day around Christmas time, we stopped by Senhor Peres'
stall, but all he had was some ordinary flounder and sea trout. As I
stood there missing the mero, Simon gave a sharp yank on one of my
pigtails. "Come on," he said, "let's go outside and look at the magic
amulets." We sloshed along through the rest of the fish market and
then we slipped and elbowed our way among the crowd of
fruitsellers, outside to the voodoo stalls jammed between the
esplanade and the Avenida. Old women in frayed shawls and little
boys in ragged shirts and holey trousers chatted or dozed under the
thatched awnings -- I remember thinking: no deportment lessons for
those kids! Roots and leaves and tiny glass vials and bottles lay in
neat rows or small round piles on rickety tables. Umbanda. I tried to
read the label on one little bottle, but I couldn't make it out.
"Simon, Simon! What does this say?"
Simon leaned over, moving his lips, trying to decipher the
crabbed and uneven Portuguese script. I happened to look up then. I
heard his voice, but I didn't follow what he was saying. There,
walking along Castilhos Franca in the direction of the Avenida
Presidente Vargas, was my father. With him was a girl. She was a
pretty, light beige mulata, and she had a wide smile. I stared -- but
my throat tightened up when I thought of calling out to my father over
all the noise and hubbub of the market stalls. Suddenly they stopped,
and she reached up and kissed him on the ear, nuzzling at his neck as
if he were a baby.
"'Strong potion'" -- Simon was reading the label -- "'to seduce
your secret love and something-or-other her something-or-other.'"
Then Simon saw where I was looking. The two of them started to
walk again, purposefully, not touching. Simon's eyebrows went up.
He turned to me. He pulled his head back stiffly as if he were trying
to avoid letting out a burp and said that Daddy was probably on his
way back to his office -- he was manager of an English timber agency
one flight up over the Banco do Brasil on the Rua do Santo Antonio.
Then Simon dropped his head again, pretending to read the bottle
labels, but I could tell me he was keeping his eyes on the figures of
Daddy and the girl -- and so was I.
They finally disappeared around the corner of Travessa Pedro
Eutiquio. I looked at Simon. He looked at me. "You know what?"
he said.
"No, what?"
"When I get my allowance, I'm going to buy one of those dark
blue bottles of hex weeds and cast a spell on crummy old Miss
Potter."
I told him he wouldn't dare. But he said he would. He shoved
me and I kicked at his shin but missed. Off balance, I slipped on the
scummy surface and fell hard on my right leg. Simon stood there
smiling down at me. My eyes filled with stinging tears. My knee was
skinned and hurt as if it hated me. "I'll put a curse on you," I said in
Portuguese.
An old coffee-colored man with deep wrinkles in his face,
who was hardly taller than I, picked me up with a grunt and said, "No,
no, pretty little doll, don't curse him, or some devil on Marajo over
there" -- he pointed toward the dark streak of the island across the
water -- "he'll hear you and turn himself into a giant fish and swim
over and steal him away!"
"I hope he does!" I said, wiping my eyes with the rough hem
of my muslin skirt.
The old man opened his mouth and then shut it again and
made the sign of the cross at me.
I especially recall that day because it was that evening that
there was the trouble with Felicia.
I didn't like fat old Felicia as well as the cook we had had
before. Her breath always stank of garlic and I had told her so twice
when she tried to kiss me. She never liked me much after that. But
she and Simon were big friends. Sometimes when Simon couldn't
sleep, he'd come into my room late at night and we'd whisper
together. I'd hear stories Felicia had told him about magic potions
and curses and the strange apparitions that came back from the "other
world."
That evening, we got back early to the house on the Travessa
da Vegia. I heard Felicia's raspy voice in the kitchen, and also
Marta's the head maid's, speaking more quietly. My mother and
father were in the sala. I was lying on the patio on one of our raspy
junco mats, balancing fallen purple blooms from the jacaranda tree
on my outstretched fingers, slowly letting them fall through, reveling
in the sweetish odor of the mosquito repellent covering my face and
arms and legs. I could hear my parents talking through the open
window.
"It's not so easy," said my father.
"Jim, she's impossible, and besides she's stealing us blind."
"Well, if you have to, you have to." said my father, his voice
sounding used up. "But it's always a mess, letting help go around
here."
"She is through, and I mean tonight, right now!" said my
mother with a voice that sounded like a broken maraca.
"All right, all right," said my father briskly, as if he were late
for the office. I sat up and saw him through the window, pulling back
the strips of red hair over his bald spot with the palm of his hand and
trying to straighten out the folds in "O Diario." My mother, her dark
brown curly locks slightly mussed up, stood with her hands tightly
gripping her elbows. She was slim then, and her profile reminded me
of Grace Kelly's.
"Then it's settled?" she said.
"Yes, settled. Yes, yes."
"Take care of it, will you Jim?"
My father looked up. He was facing the window and he saw
me looking at him. "No, Betty, that's your job."
"Hmpf! Isn't everything!" she said, and took several short
steps across the room toward the door.
"Besides," he said, "I have to go out."
She stopped abruptly. "At this hour?" He shrugged and
looked away. She let her breath out violently and strode out of the
room, muttering I don't know what.
A half an hour later, I heard a commotion in the back
courtyard. I ran around to the rear and peeked over the low adobe
wall at the end of the patio. I saw Felicia, with her squat nose and
whiskers on her lip, surrounded by our other servants and a few from
the houses next door. Then I saw Simon approaching and called for
him to come quick. Felicia chattered angrily and then moaned and
shouted while the others chirruped and tut-tutted around her. Then
she drew herself up to her full height of four-foot-something and
started to talk in a grim tone. I only got a few words, but they
sounded strange and some of them not even Portuguese. Simon crept
along the wall, getting closer to the group. In a minute he scurried
back, bent over, and whispered to me that she was cursing the house
and all of us in it.
"All of us!" I said.
"Everybody! Cursed!" said my brother with a grin that looked
alarmed but delighted. Then from the other window we heard
footsteps, and my mother appeared in the patio, shaking her head and
muttering to herself. She stood with her arms akimbo and stared at
the pale half moon that I could just see over the tile roof of the
kitchen.
By nine, Daddy still hadn't come back. Mother had been
trotting back and forth to the kitchen, trying to help Flor, the scullery
maid, get dinner. Shaking her head angrily, Mother abruptly told us
to sit down to eat. We had some manicoba stew, which I hated --
Daddy always did too. But Mother always said was a very authentic
Amazonian meal -- and besides I realize now it was probably the only
thing that she and Flor had been able to scrape together in all the
ruckus. Simon made a face and said that the manicoba wasn't so bad
if you fished out the sausage and smoked pork and didn't have to eat
the pig's feet and manioc leaves and the rest of the mess. Mother
looked at him hard and he lowered his head. I asked where Daddy
was and Mother, in a voice that sounded as if it were coming through
a tin funnel, said: "Eat the vegetables, you need the vitamins."
Daddy came home very late that night. I was awake and I
heard Marta's bare feet padding down to open the door, and then his
soft voice. And then from the sala my mother's voice, loud, "Jim!
You could have at least have let..." -- her voice fading away as they
closed the door to the sala. Mother soon found a new cook, Maria,
and I guess I liked her all right. She made tapioca pudding all the
time, and I hated tapioca, that was the only thing.
As it happened, tapioca was involved the evening my troubles
started. We had had to wait for Daddy again, dinner was late, and I
wasn't hungry anyway. By the time Marta served dessert, I felt over-full,
and the little gooey pearls of the tapioca seemed to stick in my
throat. I felt this rumble in my stomach, and I thought I would ask to
be excused, but my mother looked at me, annoyed.
"Tina, finish your pudding, you're always making excuses."
I gulped down another mouthful but it made me feel sicker.
"Do I have to?"
"Let her alone, Betty," said my father.
My mother pulled her head back into her neck and stared at
my father. She sniffed. He looked away.
Then my stomach growled and cramped and I threw up, all
yellow and hot, all over the tablecloth and down my pink blouse and
onto the blue-tiled floor.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," I said, gasping at the hot liquid burning
my throat.
"OH!" shouted my mother.
"Tina 'barfed'!" said Simon, giggling and bouncing up and
down in his chair.
"'na Tininha, pobrezinha," said Marta, rushing over with a
napkin.
My father stood up in his place. "Poor baby, are you all
right?"
"I'm sorry," I said, as Marta dunked the towel in the water
pitcher and wiped my face and sponged off my dress. My stomach
suddenly felt slightly better -- but still quivery.
"Are you sure you're all right?" said my father.
"Tina! Poor thing!" said my mother. "You'd better get to bed
at once."
"Yes, maybe you'd better," said my father.
"Tina 'barfola-ed'!" said Simon.
"Venha, Venha," said Marta, taking me by the hand and
starting to lead me away. Then my head began to spin and I leaned
over and threw up again, on Marta's skirt and shoes and the new blue
area rug.
"Oh, poor Tina!" said my mother, her face looking as if she
had just found a "rat" while combing my hair. She looked at the
small yellow-brown swamp on the rug. "What a mess!" she said. My
father leaned over and picked me up. Marta pressed between him
and me, cradling my head against her soft bosom. The two of them
carried me off, my mother following, dabbing at the vomit spots on
my dress. My head wouldn't stop spinning.
I don't remember too much after that. Once I woke up and it
was very dark. I felt nauseated again and I tried to throw up into a
little blue and white porcelain potty beside the bed, but I retched and
retched and only some yellow-colored spit came out. The sun
shone brightly into my window the next morning, the rays sparkling
off the panes still wet from pre-dawn showers. Marta brought me
some toast and tea. I took a small bite of the toast but I then didn't
want any more. I lay there, staring at the ugly dark water spots on
the yellow ceiling, and finally going back to sleep. When I woke up
next, it was raining, as was normal in Belem. My mother came in and
asked me how I felt. I told her that I felt fine, but while I talked my
eyes kept trying to close. She said that Miss Potter would stop giving
me my lessons for a while, in case I had something infectious. The
thought of Miss Potter's catching some horrible disease from me
made me feel nice and cool inside. I even tried to eat some Jello to
celebrate, but it didn't taste good at all.
I knew I was cursed.
====================================================================
VALESKA
by William Ramsay
(Note: This is an excerpt, Chapter 6, from the novel "Ay, Chucho!")
Pierre leaned back in his seat and knocked off the first of his
regulation shots of rum, lifting his false mustache slightly to get at the
glass. "Have I told you about the Ginsburgs?" he said. I shook my
head no.
"No?" he said.
Hell, was he going to be a boring pest for the whole flight? I
made a face.
"Hey!" he said.
"What?"
"Why are you looking like that?"
"What?"
"When I said 'Ginsburg.'"
"What?"
"Are you by any chance an anti-Semite, Felipe?"
"Oh for Christ's sake," I said.
He peered into my eyes. "'Christ'? Why do you bring up 'Christ'?"
"Oh, God," I said.
Giggle. "I'll accept him -- good old Yahveh." He nodded his head.
"My grandfather was a Polish Jew in Russia. He had to face that,
being the outsider. A good anarchist, a disciple of Bakunin." His
face became as solemn as its impish moon-roundedness would
permit. "I owe to that old man the indescribable richness of my
political heritage."
I nodded and opened up my mystery book, trying to pick up where
I had left off on page 62. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see a
dark gray sky lowering through one of the windows.
Pierre stared at the title on the cover of my book. "'Death in
Funny Places,'" he read. "Trash. You know, William Morris..."
"Who's he?"
"Englishman. Sound politics, Kropotkin admired him."
"Your cat?" I let the book drop.
Pierre giggled and adjusted his wig. "Felipe, you numbskull.
Little Kropotkin is named after Peter Kropotkin, the great
theoretician of anarchism." More giggles at my expense, even
though I remembered now that Kropotkin had been
somebody-or-other somewhere some while back. "Morris said that
in the future, people wouldn't need to read novels, that real life would
be more interesting than fiction."
Oh God. Maybe my life was about to _become_ interesting -- too
interesting, I thought.
"You are grossly politically undeveloped -- Felipe X, whoever you
are."
"Politics is bullshit."
"Undeveloped."
"Phony intellectuals always drive me crazy."
His eyes lit up. "Me? Never. No intellectual, phony or not. You
know what I am?"
"No, I've wondered just _who_ you are."
"Man of action -- moral action to help mankind."
"Tell me another."
"Sometimes violence." He looked thoughtful. "All men must die
-- sometimes they must be hurried on their way."
"So killing's all right."
"Nothing is 'all right,' my boy. Sometimes killing is necessary,
sometimes theft, kidnapping -- all in a just cause."
"Bullshit. The cause is named Diaz-Ginsburg, I see that much." I
picked up my book again.
"You're so intolerant, so earnest, Felipe. No sense of the
ridiculousness of life."
"Bug off."
He grabbed my book, slipped it under his butt, and sat on it,
grinning at me. I didn't have much chance of pulling it out from
beneath that padded mountain of ass. Besides, he looked like he had
muscles under the fat. I took out another mystery from my carry-on.
He shook his head and blew out a big puff of air. "Too bad."
"What?"
"I may not be able to stay long in Havana. But we'll see."
"Why too bad?"
He laughed. "I'd love to help you out. In the land of the big bad
communists. You've got a lot to learn, 'Felipe.'"
"What are you really up to on this trip, Diaz-Ginsburg?"
"You... -- he punched me on the upper arm -- "and me." He
punched again, now it hurt. "A double mystery." He punched twice
more.
"Ouch!" I said. He'd hit one of Pepita's favorite quasi-erotic
zones. "A mystery. Who can tell, who can tell?" He winked.
"Who? Not me, my friend, I refuse to tell." And he waved his arm at
the hostess, motioning with a lift of his fat elbow for his second
regulation rum.
***
We began to descend into black and gray clouds, lights appeared
through the mist. The aircraft shuddered and swayed as we bounced
and rumbled along the runway at Jose Marti Airport. Streamlets of
rain were edging down the windows as the thrust reversed and the
plane bumped and skidded, rolling onto the wet taxiway. Outside, a
gust of wind reversed the umbrellas of the airline stewards and
maintenance men. A young man with an extremely narrow pencil
mustache was waiting just outside as the bus from the plane pulled
up at the entrance into the airport. Behind him, the passengers
crowded in front of the passport control desks. He glanced at a
photograph in his hand and motioned to me. "Dr. Elizalde, a
pleasure. And this is...?" he said, looking at Pierre, who had put on a
severe expression and was clutching my left arm as if I were a lost
child.
I introduced "Waldemar" as my assistant and the guy with the
mustache raised his eyebrows but then smiled and shook hands. I
fidgeted as I noticed a group of policemen in blue uniforms, all
carrying over-large pistols in black leather holsters. A tall officer
stared at me menacingly. Tiny-Mustache, alias Comrade Garza, took
our passports in hand and took them to the "Official and V.I.P." line
and shepherded us through with a bored wave and a smile from the
bearded official behind the glass panel.
Now I really _was_ Felipe Elizalde.
As our Hungarian-built van sloshed through the rain, passing
small tinny- looking cars and donkey-drawn carts with rubber-tired
wheels along the broad avenue leading into town, I imagined the
dossiers on Jesus Revueltos in the files of the Cuban foreign office
and police and I resolved to remain "Felipe Elizalde" for as long as I
could. Kropotkin, liberated under socialism from the animal carrier,
meowed sedately on Pierre's lap. Pierre stealthily fiddled with the
bottom of the carrier, and I saw through a half-open panel a flash of
green and gray -- dollars.
I remembered the airport road from when I was a kid. But after
about five minutes I realized I was missing something. Advertising
signs -- there weren't any. Battered hand-lettered signs for grocery
stores and a broken electric sign for a tailor's. A sign over a repair
shop reading "Our Bay of Pigs: increasing production by eight times"
sent a chill through me -- I had stumbled into another world. But
driving down 23rd Street in Vedado was a little reassuring. Even in
the rain, couples and groups of young people walked in the lights
from cafes and shops -- it looked like you might still find some
action of some kind under socialism. Handing us over to the
reception clerk at the Hotel Presidente, Garza stood like a statue.
"_Bienvenidos_, _y_ _adios_," said the statue, unbending slightly.
"Thank you, Comrade Garza," I said.
Garza bowed and assured me that we would have the full
cooperation of MININT, the Ministry of the Interior, in our search
for volunteer physicians "for the struggle against capitalism in El
Salvador." As he intoned the last words, his face grew solemn, as if
he were conjuring the spirit of Carlos Marx to aid in our enterprise.
Then his nose wrinkled again and he sneezed.
"_Jesus_!" I said. Not my name, just "Gesundheit" in Spanish.
He sneezed again. "Excuse me." He pointed to Kropotkin, whom
Pierre had let run loose as he argued with the clerk about Kropotkin's
staying in his room -- a sign read "No Pets." "I'd better say
good-night," said Garza, motioning toward Kropotkin. "I'm really
feeling my cat allergy." He shook hands and left. Pierre peeled a
few dollars off a wad he was carrying in his pocket and slipped it to
the reception clerk, then handed Kropotkin to a bellboy and said he
had some people to see -- about smuggling something like auto parts
or electronic calculators, I guessed.
"O.K., Pierre," I said.
"'Waldemar'! Remember my name, "Felipe.'"
"Oh yes, Waldemar." God yes, I thought, we all had better
remember which names were which.
I saw him go out the door, waving, deftly abducting a dollar-fare
"Turistaxi" away from three middle-aged ladies who talked like
Toronto and looked like Fort Lauderdale. I looked around the lobby.
Marble pillars, the reception desk swirling like a drunken French
curve, Oriental and Slavic tourists in starched wide-collar sports
shirts. I was overjoyed to be surrounded only by people who had
absolutely no reason at all to think that my name was not Dr. Felipe
Elizalde Quinonez!
***
A pounding, pounding in my head. No, it was at the door. 10:45,
it was dark as coal.
It was Pierre -- Waldemar. He was panting. We were on the sixth
floor and I guessed that the elevator still wasn't working.
"Come on." Puff, puff. He looked at my stockinged feet. "Put
your shoes on." Puff, puff. He made an eating motion. "Dinner
time." Puff and wheeze.
I told him it was too late, I wasn't hungry.
"Who cares about being hungry!" He tousled my hair and giggled.
I told him I needed to go to sleep, but he pointed out that
tomorrow was Saturday and my appointments at the Ministry didn't
start until Monday. "Come on," he said, "I'll show you one of my
favorite retreats from the blight of socialism." I washed my face and
shaved, as best I could. It was the first but not the last time in Cuba
that I longed for a missing sink stopper -- the shortage of small
rubber and plastic items in Cuba was a noticeable part of the
imperialist plot against the Revolution. Outside there was a '57 Buick
taxi waiting. Off we went along the Malecon along the ocean to a
place called Pipi's, a couple of blocks from Hemingway's Floridita
hangout, on one of the narrow streets of the Old Town. At Pipi you
paid your bill with poor socialist pesos, not with almighty capitalist
dollars, and Pipi's customers, in the half light shining from the
empty stage onto the floor, were scruffy and noisy and didn't look
like your average tourists. Pierre introduced me to four or five
people, and then a very thin young man named Arnoldo sat down with
us. His narrow, triangular face wore a pout, he kept his chin pulled
back toward his chest. "Where are the damned drinks?" he said.
"They're washing the glasses from the next table," said Pierre.
There was a national shortage of glassware, along with lots of other
kinds of utensils.
"Fucking Cuba," said Arnoldo.
"Naughty, naughty," said Pierre.
"And fuck you too, Pierre."
I noticed that "Waldemar" had reverted to "Pierre," no aliases
needed in the "Pipi." Irrationally, I half-expected Pierre to start
calling me "Chucho." While we waited for our drinks and the hash
and beans, Pierre started playing with his hands, fiddling with a fork,
trying to balance a spoon on one end. Finally he set his hands down
lightly on the table and walked his fingers over to Arnoldo.
"Hello, Arnoldito," he said in a falsetto voice, wiggling his index
finger as if it were a person.
Arnoldo looked up and then down again.
"Arnoldito is sad," said Pierre's finger, "he has to go play games
tomorrow."
Arnoldo pouted harder, his lips protruding exaggeratedly, like a
netted fish.
"Poor, poor Arnoldito," Pierre's finger wheezed. Arnoldo started
to get up, but Pierre placed his fleshy pie-sized hand on Arnoldo's
arm and squeezed. Arnoldo winced and looked sharply at Pierre.
Pierre smiled broadly at him, and he sat down again. Pierre might
have looked out of shape but he had muscles when he needed them.
Pierre told me in a very solemn voice that Arnoldo was a famous
_jai- alai_ player and was appearing at the _fronton_ the following
evening. At the word "famous," Arnoldo snorted. Pierre repeated it,
"_muy_ _conocido_," and Arnoldo snorted again. Pierre laughed,
snorting himself. I thought the whole thing was going to turn into a
snorting contest, when a guitarist and a keyboard player came out
and set up shop beside a set of drums. Then the drummer a man
wearing a shining gold alto saxophone appeared. A very short man
in a _guayabera_ came out on the stage pulling an old-fashioned
microphone, tripping in the coils of black cord, stepping gingerly out
from the cord, then getting caught in it again. Someone in the
audience laughed. He laughed too and blew his nose into a large
handkerchief and laughed again. "Woo-woo, woo- woo, here she is,
Ladies and Gentlemen, here she-e-e-ee is-s-s-s!" A voluptuous
girl, tall, in a tight off-the-shoulder blouse and a skimpy bright-red
skirt that showed lots of fine-looking coffee-colored skin, stepped
forward into the lights. Her lips were a bright yellow that sort of
blended in with her whitish-blonde hair. Some people at another
table clapped. Pierre slapped his knee loudly, while Arnoldo stared
at her, his eyes fixed and solemn as if at a porcelain statue of the
Virgin Mary.
"Ladies and Gentlemen, the song stylings of Valeska!" The
girl smiled at the audience, especially at our table. Arnoldo looked
at her then and waved with two fingers. A shy smile.
Poor guy, he had it bad.
Valeska sang several semi-soft rock songs, then she sang
"Melancholy Baby" in English with a heavy accent and went on to a
ragged salsa tune, where practically all she had to do was repeat
"_Soy_ _tuya_" (I'm yours) over and over. The sax hooted, the
cymbals and drums zinged and crashed under and over, melding with
the mellow tones of her Billie Holiday voice. She moved as she
sang, the long legs spinning slowly, the toes pointed sensuously.
Not my kind of music, except for "Melancholy Baby" -- along with
films of the thirties and forties, I go for the jazz and pops of the same
period. "You're a throwback," Amelia always says to me. But I dug
the dark quality of Valeska's voice and the way she moved. Valeska
was my kind of woman -- those boobs like mangoes, those full
African lips. Full _yellow_ lips for God's sake!
Well, Amelia also always says that everybody's my kind of
woman. A gross exaggeration -- but why do you only have to like
one type, I ask you? It doesn't make sense, it's like only liking
mashed potatoes and not boiled or baked or lyonnaise. A potato is a
potato, but it isn't either, if you know what I mean. Besides, Amelia's
enjoys giving me a hard time about my "past." Just because I made
the mistake of telling her once about the dream I had about Irena --
and then that bad break when we ran into a very drunk Moya one
night at the Club Cerezo in South Miami. What past, I ask you?
Anyway, Valeska came to our table afterwards. She had changed
into a purple blouse with a green skirt. The blonde hair had been a
wig, and her "natural" hair was frizzy on top and clipped at the sides
and dyed to a deep violet color. The full lips were still yellow. She
kissed Arnoldo on the cheek, leaving a golden smudge, and shook
hands. She repeated the name "Felipe" as if I were the most
interesting person she had met in the past fifteen minutes. She stood
there, staring at me, looking like an outsized beige imp with green,
yellow, and purple highlights -- while Arnoldo looked as if he were
about ready to bop me one. Then she sat down next to him and took
his hand in hers, stroking it.
Still stroking, she looked across the table at me and smiled.
"Welcome to Havana, Felipe. I used to know someone named Felipe.
We called him 'Flip'" She pronounced it Fleep, with a strong pucker
of her yellow lips on the "F."
"Flip is fine with me," I said.
"Good," she said, her voice low and vibrant.
I began to feel a little swelling in the groin -- under the right
circumstances, I could get used to this life of being "Havana Flip," I
thought. Arnoldo's face seemed to be turned a tan purple. I looked at
Pierre. He stared at Valeska brashly, with a half-smile, with the same
sort of look I had often seen on Kropotkin's face.
"Liked that, didn't you?" Pierre said later as we took another
_pesero_ cab back to the hotel.
"Yellow lipstick," I said.
"Not easy to come by in Havana," said Pierre, shifting his large
body and jamming me against the side panel of the cab.
I gasped. "Not so easy to come by anywhere I know about," I
said. "Felipe, I don't know who the hell you are." He glanced at
the driver's back and leaned over to me and whispered in his fluent
but almost un- understandable English, "But you've had a quiet life, I
think. I could almost believe that you are some E.T. from outer
space." He pretended to pick up my sports shirt and examine my
navel. "Ah, transistors! I thought so!"
I shook him off roughly. I don't like being treated like a nerd.
"Lay off."
"How about some laying on -- laying little Valeska, for instance?"
he said.
"She's Arnoldo's girl?" I said.
Pierre giggled. "Not exactly." He tapped his teeth thoughtfully
with his fingernails. "You could say that Arnoldo's her boy, one of
her boys -- when and if she feels like it."
Staring into the darkness in my high-ceilinged bedroom about two
that morning, I could still visualize her face, one minute blonde, the
next, purple- haired, with a grand, full bright yellow mouth. Oh yes,
man, yes. I brought up an image of how her body would look
undressed. Then I hurriedly put the image away again. I needed my
sleep, for God's sake!.
I lay there, trying to drowse off. Come on, come on, enough
about broads -- let's get the job done. Errol Flynn -- you know, Robin
Hood -- had Olivia de Havilland, his Maid Marian. But before love
came his solemn duty, protecting the populace of Nottingham from
Claude Rains and Basil Rathbone. And I felt strongly my solemn
duty to me, myself: to stay miles away from a Cuban prison and even
farther from a Cuban _paredon_.
On Monday "Dr. Felipe Elizalde" would begin his negotiations to
get Dr. Federico Revueltos -- and Senor Jose Pillo -- out of one of
those prisons.
================================================
L'AMOUR, L'AMORE
by Otho Eskin
(Note: This is part 4 of the play "Duet")
CHARACTERS
(In order of appearance)
SARAH BERNHARDT
ELEONORA DUSE
MAN
SETTING
Backstage of the Syria Theatre, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
TIME
April 5, 1924 Evening.
SCENE
SARAH
I was a triumph. The London public has always been enraptured by
me.
ELEONORA
I was a fantastic success.
SARAH
There was really no contest.
ELEONORA
I recall a thoughtful review by George Bernard Shaw.
SARAH
Toad!
MAN
(As SHAW)
Madame Bernhardt played Magda in Sudermann's Heimat at Daly's
Theatre on Tuesday and was promptly challenged by Duse in the
same part at the Drury Lane on Wednesday. The contrast between the
two is as extreme as any contrast could possibly be. Madame
Bernhardt is beautiful, and entirely inhuman and incredible. But the
incredulity is pardonable, because, though it is all the greatest
nonsense, nobody believing in it, the actress herself least of all, it is
so artful, so clever, and carried off with such a genial air, that it is
impossible not to accept it with good humor.
SARAH
Condescending snot.
MAN
One feels when the heroine bursts on the scene, a dazzling vision of
beauty. That, of course, is irresistible. Her acting is childishly
egotistical. She does not enter into the leading character; she
substitutes herself for it. And how capitally vulgarly Sarah does that!
SARAH
Do you realize, this man is a vegetarian!
MAN
All this is precisely what does not happen in the case of Duse, whose
every part is a separate creation. Her method is that of an actress who
shows us how human sorrow can express itself only in its appeal for
the sympathy it needs. Duse, who performs without makeup and with
the simplest of costumes, can, with a tremor of the lip, make you feel
rather than see, and touch you straight on the very heart.
SARAH
Not everyone agreed with that wretched man.
ELEONORA
Not everyone agreed.
MAN
The critics were divided.
SARAH
The public was divided.
MAN
In the first round between the two greatest artists of the stage it
was a draw.
ELEONORA and SARAH
I wouldn't say that.
SARAH
Regardless of what that little man said, I went on to greater and
greater success in the theater. There was no part that I would not take
on no matter how daring and shocking. Did you see my
performance of Hamlet?
ELEONORA
Of course not! What a silly thing to do, Sarah. You should have
known better.
SARAH
You're wrong. It wasn't just a trick. I was a good Hamlet.
SARAH
(As Hamlet)
Now I am alone.
O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
Is it not monstrous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit
That from her working all the visig'd wann'd,
Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect,
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit? and all for nothing,
For Hecuba!
What's Hecuba to him, or he to her,
That he should weep for her? What would he do,
Had he the motive and the cue for passion
That I have? He would drown the stage with tears
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech,
Make mad the guilty, and appall the free,
Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed
The very faculties of eyes and ears.
ELEONORA
Wonderful! Sarah. But a little bizarre, don't you think? Did you
never want to try something new? Something that spoke to normal
human concerns of normal people?
SARAH
Good heavens, no!
ELEONORA
I wanted modern works that would fit the new, expressive style of
acting I was creating works by modern writers like Ibsen.
ELEONORA
(As Mrs. Alving)
I'm haunted by ghosts. It was just as if there were ghosts before my
very eyes. But I'm inclined to think that we're all ghosts; it's not only
the things we've inherited from our fathers and mothers that live on in
us, but all sorts of old, dead ideas and old dead beliefs, and things of
that sort. They're not actually alive in us, but they're rooted there all
the same and we can't rid ourselves of them. I've only to pick up a
newspaper and when I read it I seem to see ghosts gliding between the
lines. I should think there may be ghosts all over the country as
countless as grains of sand. And we are, all of us, so pitifully afraid of
the light.
SARAH
Lovely. Not exactly my cup of tea, of course but interesting.
ELEONORA
I rejected the imitation of reality and searched for something real,
deep within myself.
SARAH
Is that what they meant when they said I was the last great actress of
the Nineteenth Century and you were the first great actress of the
Twentieth Century? If I may be candid, I prefer my century to yours.
ELEONORA
When everything worked, when the play was right, when I was
composed, I was transported. But even then I felt something missing
in my life. I felt empty.
SARAH
The theater was not enough?
ELEONORA
The theater never brought me joy only pain.
SARAH
There was a time when I too felt the need for something more. I
dreamed of a man who would accept me unquestioningly.
ELEONORA
My heart was tired of never finding understanding. Although I was
surrounded by people, they were all strangers. I felt an agony of
loneliness that racked my soul. I remember performing in Cairo.
During a free day I visited the gardens of the Khedive to see the
famous maze. The Egyptian gate keeper warned me not to go in
alone.
MAN
You must not walk alone, Madame. You will lose your way.
ELEONORA
I know what I'm doing. I walked a long afternoon through the maze,
oblivious to all but my own thoughts. The sun cast deep shadows,
filling the maze with purple umbra. Suddenly, I was alone alone in
a passage with thick green walls. I became frightened and called out
but there was no answer. I ran down one green alley and up another
only to find myself once again where I had started. I was overcome
with dread that I would never escape. There was no sound. No
voices. Nothing but silence. Above me I could see the sky filled with
swallows. I felt trapped unable to move. I thrust my hands into the
green walls of yew until they were scratched and bleeding.
SARAH
You thought you could find escape.
ELEONORA
I was weary of living for others and wanted to live for myself. I
sought grace in love.
SARAH
We met at a masked ball in Brussels. I was dressed as a queen. He
came as Prince Hamlet. We danced through the night. The
champagne went to my head and I thought I would faint. He took my
arm and led me onto the balcony.
ELEONORA
I was in Venice exhausted and unsure. My soul feverish I could
not sleep.
SARAH
He asked me to remove my mask.
MAN
I beg of you, Madame, allow me to gaze on your features.
SARAH
I refused.
ELEONORA
I fled my apartment and found a gondola. All night I drifted aimlessly
along the canals.
(The MAN gives SARAH a rose)
MAN
My Queen, take this rose. Go to the park tomorrow and carry this. I
will find you.
ELEONORA
As dawn broke I watched the boats that brought fresh fruit to the city.
SARAH
The next day I hired an open landau and went riding among the other
carriages in the park.
ELEONORA
At first light I descended from my gondola.
SARAH
I pinned the rose to my breast.
ELEONORA
I saw a man watching me. He was dressed in elegant evening attire in
the Roman fashion. He had the eyes of a man possessed. Standing in
the delicate dawn-light, I was transfixed. We looked at one another
and in that dawning silence we knew all we needed to know about the
other. He bowed and said.
MAN
My name is Gabriele.
SARAH
As I rode through the park on a warm morning, the air filled with the
first promise of spring, a man on horseback drew up beside me.
"Good my lord," I said. "How does your honor for this many a day?"
MAN
I humbly thank you, Gracious Queen. Allow me to introduce myself. I
am Charles-Joseph-Eugene-Henri, Prince de Ligne. I would be
honored, lady, if you would permit me to accompany you.
ELEONORA
For hours we walked through the narrow back streets of Venice.
Although I had not
slept that night, I felt no tiredness.
MAN
We talked of everything. Of poetry. Of theater.
ELEONORA
Of love. Everything that matters. We stopped on a bridge so full
of our thoughts our feelings we could not go on. So full of
words we could not speak.
SARAH
I had known men before. Many men. Too many. But now I knew
love.
MAN
They say we spend our lives searching for that one, perfect soul that
will make us complete a person we are doomed to love.
SARAH
Charles consumed me. Every waking moment my thoughts were of
him alone. I neglected everything for him. It was perfect.
ELEONORA
Perfect?
SARAH
At first. Later...
MAN
My adored one, I cannot understand why you persist in appearing on
stage.
SARAH
It is my life.
MAN
You need never want for anything again. I offer you everything
comfort, wealth, prestige.
SARAH
Charles became demanding. Sometimes we argued I was desolate.
Separation was my despair.
MAN
I cannot be expected to spend all my time in Paris. I have
responsibilities. Give up the vanity of the theater, Sarah. You don't
need to act any more. You don't need your career. You have me.
SARAH
When we were apart I wrote to him. Once. Twice. Sometimes three
times a day. (SARAH sits at a table and writes.) My adored Charles, I
am mad with grief. I am suffering suffering. Yes, yes. I was bad
the other day. Oh, how I weep for that badness in me. I no longer
have any pride. I am tamed. I am at your feet, submissive and
repentant. You cannot know the anguish I feel since your departure.
Nothing is important to me not the theater nothing but you.
Make me your slave, your possession, but keep your love for me.
What dreadful nights I spend. I look for you, I pound your pillow,
then I kiss it and beg it to confide in me, to tell me your last thoughts.
The pillow does not answer and I weep alone. Pity! Have pity, my
master. I beg you for mercy. I cannot go on. Everything has crumbled
around me. Tell me that you permit me to come and look at you. I
shall say nothing to you, nothing. For a brief, searing moment Charles
was everything I had yearned for in life.
ELEONORA
It did not last.
SARAH
It could not last.
ELEONORA
Sometimes life fails us.
(SARAH rises and walks nervously
around the area.)
SARAH
I had heard nothing from Charles in days. I was in despair. I cancelled
my performance and took the train to Brussels. At the station I found
a cab and rushed to my beloved's home. When I turned the corner of
his street, I saw the windows lit brilliantly. Carriages were drawing up
to the house. When I arrived at the door, I was shown by his footman
into an antechamber. There I waited.
MAN
My dear, Sarah, what brings you here this evening?
SARAH
I had to see you, my love.
MAN
This is not a convenient time for a visit. As you can see, I am having a
party. I must attend to my guests.
SARAH
I have wonderful news, my darling.
MAN
Can't this news of yours wait until a better time?
SARAH
No, Charles. It can't. I am pregnant. I was standing in the middle of
the room. He said nothing for a long time. I saw him glance at the
clock on the mantlepiece. My darling, I said, I am pregnant. This is
news that cannot wait.
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