by Reindaldo Arenas
Translated by Andrew Bush
Excerpted from Fiction Volume 6, Number 3 (1981).
Postcard of Obispo Street in Havana, Cuba, 1905.
“It’s Got To be chopped down,” says one. And I go out to the street. The other two split their sides laughing; they give a snort and applaud. “It’s got to be chopped down,” they repeat, circling around the first. Finally, they leave the dining room and head toward the patio. But I’m already on the street. It’s cool. The brutal September sun has departed and October has settled in the trees. It’s almost pleasant to walk these streets aimlessly. From here I don’t hear their prancing, their intolerable screaming, their constant running back and forth through the house, returning, questioning, wearing the shine off the flagstones of the patio. They just don’t stop for a minute, and when they got it into their heads to cut down the trees (saying that they were shedding their leaves and that they always had to be sweeping), they did it with such zeal that in a week they finished them all off. Only the almond tree at the back of the patio remained standing. Without realizing it, I’m already in the heart of Old Havana. I walk along Obispo, and, even though I’m not at all interested, I glance at all the store windows and I stop in front of a few for a moment, looking without seeing, or reading indifferently the titles of scientific books. I stand for a moment looking at these undesirable books, until I notice that somebody else is looking at them, and, it would seem, with great interest. It’s a gorgeous girl. I look at her from head to toe and feel the urge to touch her. She takes a gigantic comb from her pocketbook; she fixes her hair, looks at me, and starts walking, strutting a bit. Her dress, short and tight, adjusts itself to the rhythm of her body. Yes, I’m sure that she looked at me and that for a second she gave me a signal. Or maybe it’s my imagination….
The full story can be found in Fiction Volume 6, Number 3. Please follow the subscribe link for information on ordering.
REINALDO ARENAS, born in Cuba in 1943, left there during the 1980 exodus. He has written three novels of a projected five-novel cycle, Hallucinations (El mundo alucinante), which has been published in English, Celestino antes el alba (Celestino Before Dawn), and El palacio de las blanquísimas mofetas (The Palace of Pure White Skunks). He now lives in New York City.