Joan Didion - A Book of Common Prayer

YOU NO DOUBT HEARD THE TAPE.

“ This is not an isolated action. We ask no one’s permission to make the revolution. ”

I heard only part of it, on a Radio Jamaica relay, but I read excerpts from it in Time and in Prensa Latina and in the Caracas Daily Journal , excerpts always illustrated by the impenetrable picture of the child in the candy-striped pinafore. I heard only part of the Radio Jamaica relay because Gerardo was at the house the night it was played, and he had arranged the evening as usual to annoy and discomfit everyone involved. I used to think the design of such evenings Gerardo’s only true amusement.

Or more accurately his only true vocation.

Since he was only fitfully amused by anything at all.

In the first place Gerardo had asked Elena to come for dinner that night. That Elena came was a tribute to Gerardo’s sexual power over her, because Elena was not speaking to me. Elena was not speaking to me because I had that morning advised her that she and Gerardo would be better off exhibiting their tedious interest in each other’s bodies in the Caribe ballroom than at political meetings under surveillance by both Victor and the Americans. I did not like hearing about Elena and Gerardo from Tuck Bradley. I did not like Tuck Bradley hearing about Elena and Gerardo from Kasindorf and Riley. As a matter of fact I had already heard about Elena and Gerardo, from Victor, and I did not like that either.

Elena said that Gerardo was the only person in the entire family who understood dancing or “fun.”

I said that this might be true but in this case Gerardo’s “fun” lay not in dancing but in embarrassing the family by parading the widow of a family presidente at meetings of people opposed to the family. It made no difference if Gerardo went to these meetings, because Gerardo’s image in the community, deserved or not, was that of someone “worthless,” and “young.” It did make a difference if she, Elena, went to these meetings, because her image in the community, again deserved or not, was that of someone “virtuous,” and “older.”

A national treasure as it were.

But Elena had stopped speaking. Elena did not even know that these events to which Gerardo took her were “meetings.” She believed them to be “parties.” I think she still does.

In any case.

In the second place.

Just asking Elena to dinner had not quite sated Gerardo’s craving for social piquancy. He had asked Elena and then he had proceeded to ask an extremely sullen girl he had been seeing off and on for years, an ambitious mestiza who had once gone to Paris with him and left him first for a minor Thyssen and then for an English rock-and-roll singer and had recently returned to Boca Grande to redeploy her resources. The girl was the daughter of the cashier at the Jockey Club and her name was Carmen Arrellano but she called herself Camilla de Arrellano y Bolívar and did not visit the Jockey Club. On this particular evening she was sulking because Gerardo was listening to the radio, and possibly also because I had told the cook to ignore her demand to be served a separate dinner of three boiled shrimp on a white plate with half a lemon wrapped in gauze. The cook had found this demand particularly offensive because her son was married to Carmen Arrellano’s cousin.

“ All class enemies must suffer exemplary punishment. ”

The voice on Radio Jamaica was sweetly instructive.

“ When the fascist police think we are near we will be far away. When the fascist police think we are far away we will be near. ”

“She lisps,” Gerardo said.

“She sounds like those Cubans at the party,” Elena said. Elena had several times mentioned this “party” to which she and Gerardo had gone the night before, apparently thinking to annoy me and Carmen Arrellano in a single stroke. “Doesn’t she, Gerardo. Those dreadful Cubans who came with Bebe Chicago. I don’t mean the lisp, I mean the words.”

“I’m only listening for the lisp,” Gerardo said. “I wouldn’t mention Bebe Chicago in front of Grace if I were you, she’ll cut off your clothes allowance.”

I said nothing. Bebe Chicago was a West Indian homosexual who after some years at the London School of Economics and a few more organizing Caribbean “liberation fronts” out of Mexico had turned up in Boca Grande to see what he could promote. His name was François Parmentier but everyone called him Bebe Chicago. I have no idea why. He was said to have connections with the guerrilleros . I heard about him frequently, from both Victor and Tuck Bradley. People like Bebe Chicago come and go in Boca Grande, and the main mark they leave is to have provided inadvertent employment for the many other people required to follow them around and tap their telephones.

“Grace thinks Bebe Chicago and I are using you,” Gerardo said.

“Delicious,” Elena said. “Do it.”

“Actually that’s not the dynamic.” Gerardo smiled at me and Elena. “Actually I’m using Bebe Chicago. Listen to this girl. I like the lisp and the pinafore together. Very nice.”

“All you think about is sex,” Elena said.

“You wish that were true,” Gerardo said. “But it’s not.”

“She bores me,” Carmen Arrellano said sullenly. Carmen had been arranged since dinner in a corner of the room where she could gaze at herself in a mirror. “It bores me.”

“Of course it bores you,” Gerardo said. “You don’t like sex. You can’t dress for it, there are never any photographers. Or is that what bores you?”

“The radio ,” Carmen said sullenly.

“I didn’t dream you were listening,” Elena said. “I thought you were devising a new makeup. Have you ever thought of bleaching your eyebrows?”

“I said this is boring me,” Carmen said to Gerardo.

Gerardo held up a hand to silence her and moved closer to the radio.

“This was really a terribly amusing party you missed last night,” Elena said to Carmen.

Carmen picked up a magazine.

“Steel band,” Elena said. Actually Elena had not found the “party” amusing at all. Actually Elena had complained before she stopped speaking to me that Gerardo’s friends did not dance but sat around a filthy room watching a Cuban film about sugar production. Elena smiled at Carmen. “Lots of Dominicans and these frightful Cubans. We danced until five this morning. Are you still bored?”

“Carmen is always bored,” Gerardo said. “Excuse me. Camilla is always bored. I want to hear this lisp.”

“ We shall reply to repression with liberation. We shall reply to the terrorism of the dictatorship with the terrorism of the revolution. ”

Elena continued to smile benignly at Carmen.

Carmen dropped her magazine on the floor and stood up.

“We’re tiring your mother,” Carmen announced to Gerardo. “And your amusing aunt.”

“I should say,” Elena said. “It’s nearly nine.”

“I’ll take you home when this is over,” Gerardo said. “Meanwhile you might listen.”

“Pinched little parrot talking about capitalism,” Carmen said. “Who cares about capitalism.”

“That’s very interesting, Carmen.” Gerardo was turning the radio dials to keep the relay from fading. “It’s very interesting because there’s a body of thought that capitalism is precisely what ruined your character.”

There was a silence.

Elena giggled.

“Also yours,” Gerardo said to Elena. “Not that I agree entirely.”

I was relieved when the relay faded out.

I was equally tired of listening to Gerardo and Elena and Carmen Arrellano and the little girl on the tape.