Severo Sarduy - Firefly

He spoke with no one, never set foot in a store, never stayed out after sundown, not even on Sunday. He had only one set of clothes, which he washed at night. If he had a beer, he drank it alone.

One Sunday he returned from the harbor. He had seen an Italian ship festooned with bunting for a party on board. Women in tight-fitting white silk gowns and peacock-feathered hats had been tossing paper streamers in the air and flinging empty champagne bottles off the stern. Bursts of laughter reached all the way to the park, where Sunday strollers reveled in the celebration.

He opened the big door, passed the threadbare furniture, shoved aside a stool with his foot, took the stairs to the mezzanine and on up to the second floor. His mind was not on his whereabouts, rather on the words he had heard from the ship. A woman dressed to the nines had leaned over the first-class rail and, between giggles, yelled, “I’m not expecting anyone, but I’m convinced someone is going to come!”

He was about to enter the moth heaven that was his room, when he saw pressed against an office door, standing stock-still, a figure he could not make out in the darkness of the hallway. Someone was peeking through a keyhole or glued to the wood listening, apparently not even breathing, eavesdropping on what was occurring inside.

He approached silently. No doubt about it. It was she, Ada, so fascinated by what she was hearing that she did not even notice his presence, his nearness. When he reached her the redhead gave a start and covered her mouth. Having stifled her cry, she put a finger to her lips, opening wide those purple eyes in which Firefly thought he could see himself acknowledged, perhaps reflected, as in a minuscule and convex ship’s mirror.

“Who is it?” the melon-head asked straight off in a whisper, as if the snooping had rekindled a long-standing complicity of which this chance meeting was but an astute step, minutely plotted.

She moved close, her lips to his ear. Her mothball-and-violets perfume, the rhythm of her breathing, the warmth of her breath against the lobe of his ear all shook him with the same intensity as the fear or desire that made him tremble when he rubbed himself against the silk or the words he had overheard coming from the ship.

“It’s them,” the redhead murmured, as if their identities went without saying. “Them again.”

Firefly’s right hand went to his throat, his breath caught short.

“The same ones? Are you sure?”

“Yup. Greaseball and Boots from his own skin.”

“The healers. Isidro and Gator, those are their names. ”

“Them. ”

“So. how come?”

Ada touched one of her index fingers to the other in a rapid indication of a bridge, a contact, an electrical charge, something going on between the peroxide giraffe and the odious men.

Inside, the conversation stopped.

Firefly was about to say, “Let’s get out of here,” when the door flew open.

The spied-upon trio came into view. They were rigid, flushed with contained rage. In the middle reigned Munificence, her Venetian tower in full erection, an emblem of unwavering determination. On either side, like two merciless Cerberuses awaiting the order to kill, were Fatso (his alcoholism evident in the pendular oscillation of his gelatinous body and in the incandescence of his beady eyes, now tinged orange like a vulture’s behind those heavy lenses) and bearded Gator, who brandished a decoction like an avenging dagger in his raised right hand, his face frozen in an infanticidal smirk.

From these offended souls emanated a reproving, practically mucilaginous silence that stuck to the skin, that befouled, and that — Firefly felt it immediately — also enveloped the redhead, trapping the two of them in a single net of disgust.

It was Munificence who spoke up, without raising her voice, her teeth clenched tight enough to squeak.

“I knew it,” she spit out each syllable, the words like hissing blow-darts sent to punch holes in them. A moment of silence, then, “What a disgrace my life is! What a disgrace!”

She leapt upon the defenseless redhead as if on a bloodied prey, seizing her in the blink of an eye by both shoulders. Quickly she covered her mouth and hauled her the length of the hall and down the stairs.

Firefly thought he heard Ada’s sobs, then realized he was alone with the two henchmen. What surprised him most, however, was not the suddenness of his abandonment but the inexplicable reaction of the visitors: They looked at each other, as astounded as the melon-head himself. and they burst out laughing!

“So, now we’re grown up, little man!” Gator fired at him derisively while opening the door wide and stepping aside, extending his hand toward the interior of the office in a gesture of invitation.

“Come in, young gentleman, come in,” Isidro added in the same tone. “As you can see, there is still plenty left for a surprise guest.”

On the desk, with no more utensils than two baccarat goblets, a kitchen knife, a stack of paper plates and another of paper napkins, they had laid out a veritable cold banquet. The chicken salad had stained the green leather that covered the desktop. Plunged into a meatball minus a bite was a little red plastic fork.

“Now you’ve got the keys just like the man of the house. ”

Firefly wondered how and from whom Gator had learned that detail.

“At the least,” the reptile continued, “you, sir, ought to smoke a good cigar, don’t you think?”

“And sure enough,” Isidro took up the lead voice, “here’s one of the finest Romeo y Julietas.”

He broke into a sebaceous giggle.

Gator struck a match and lit the Havana himself, inhaling hard.

“Suck in that smoke!” he ordered. “You’ve got too much on your mind.”

A snigger.

Firefly was standing next to the desk. He tried with all his strength to say, “I don’t want to.” But not a word emerged.

He had no idea why he looked at his feet. They were firmly on the ground, the laces well tied. He thought he heard the tinkling of the cut glass hanging from the dusty old lamp, as happened whenever there was a lot of wind or when disoriented birds, fleeing the fumigated warehouses of the port, found their way inside.

Unaware how much time had passed, he heard in a dream or echoing over a loudspeaker the inquisitor’s stentorian voice: “Here is your cigar.”

Firefly shook his head.

Then the man with scaly skin and bloodshot eyes, loosening his tie and his fly at the same time, as if an urgent need had overcome him, swayed into the office next door and disappeared.

He returned wielding another cigar, this one twisted and greenish. Closing his zipper, he came toward Firefly, his gaze fixed on something nonexistent but vile, like a liquor stain or a yellow smear.

The poor melon-head watched him approach and hid his sweaty hands in his pockets. His knees were trembling and he understood at once that he would not be able to move or speak.

“If you don’t want that one,” Gator ordered, putting the Par-tagás Culebra in his own mouth, “then smoke one of these. They’re so mild even women like them. ”

Firefly grabbed hold of the Havana with his two small moist hands; the silky texture and the warmth of the leaves surprised him. He was about to bring the cigar to his lips when the first ash burned his fingers. He blew on them, his eyes full of tears.

“I don’t know how to smoke or how to whistle,” he heard himself say. “No one ever taught me.”

“Look,” the scaly one replied, shaking with laughter, “nothing’s easier.” And he rubbed his hands together like a mason about to build a wall. “Haven’t you ever seen a bat smoke?” *

He surged forward, and using thumb and forefinger like a pincer he held the boy’s nose. Then he stuffed the cigar in his mouth. The little firefly began to choke.