Severo Sarduy - Firefly

They disappeared up a cobblestone alley between two pink churches. In the fragile light of dawn, the two figures against the sparkling bluish paving stones fresh with dew had the precision of a mirage: morning’s white lingering note, ephemeral messengers who vanished before the sun could devour everything with its leprous cruelty.

The churches’ symmetrical façades glowed like unfinished metal when the first orange rays of the sun touched the broken volutes and the gross adipose angels shaking maracas on either side of the doors and beside the crumbling triangle of lintels, where invading rats had found all the amenities of refuge.

Firefly took a few steps. The joins between the cobblestones wove an awkward tangle, a perspective drawing of short drab lines that stood out against the leaden gray of the rilievos and receded progressively toward the horizon between the two churches.

He was meditating on the priestess’s words and on everything in his life that seemed confused, ominous, and impossible to decipher. His story was a frayed tapestry with no apparent pattern, seen in a dream.

He felt someone touch him on the shoulder.

Startled, he turned around. He had not heard anyone approach.

Next to him stood a strange being somewhere between senile childhood and long-lasting decrepitude, maybe a girl whose face was parchment-like from premature wrinkles, or perhaps an elderly woman whose skin was smeared with wax or powdered eggshell. She was tiny, fragile-looking; her body had either not yet reached maturity or was already desiccated, skin and bone, and had preserved at the end of her life, like an archaeological relic, some aspect of her youth. She was wearing a long, baggy dress made of shining silk, within which she seemed to float. She was barefoot. Her feet were bony and pointy, and against the paving stones they looked like two porgies. Her hair was straw-blond, maybe newborn fuzz or maybe gray, dyed with peroxide and saffron. A flimsy tiara made of hammered silver or tin held and adorned her lustrous scalp.

The lips of the apparition parted in a hint of a smile or a grimace. From the depths of her foggy pupils streaked with ash this emaciated being glanced his way. “Would you like me to show you something?” she accosted him without the least preamble. “Something you will never forget?”

“Who are you?” Firefly managed to mumble as he stepped back, terrified by the possibly angelic, possibly demonic, certainly supernatural specter.

“You don’t recognize me?” the horror responded with derision. Her voice was fluty and nasal; her phrases ended with a piercing rasp. “Take a good look because I haven’t changed. Don’t you remember the day Munificence on a whim kicked me out of the charity house? Ah, now you see who I am!” and her voice exploded in a gravelly chortle.

She raised her skirts and spun around, slender and supple.

Firefly (he always noticed the trifling and missed the essential) noted that she spun in the opposite direction to the priestess. The silk of her dress sparkled with a bluish glint in the square, like a standard in a procession.

“What are you doing here so early?” Firefly asked.

“I was at a masked ball at the Colonia Española, and I gave my tutors the slip so I could take a stroll on my own. Would you like me to show you something? A place like no other. If you come, you won’t regret it.”

She gave him a tremulous wink of her waxy eyelids that was meant to be mischievous. Then she touched his shoulder lightly in a gesture suggesting complicity, which to Firefly felt like the caress of a scorpion.

The skinny girl did not knock on the door; she shoved it open.

A descending spiral staircase came into view; it had no banister, nor did it appear to ever end. Down below reigned a greenish penumbra populated by indecipherable murmurs: black wings or poisonous elytra.

The descent seemed interminable.

Skin-and-bones went first, whirling frenetically and shouting gleeful encouragement, which her nasal twang and the metallic timbre of the echo transformed into incomprehensible whines.

The train of her dress, always just a few paces ahead of Firefly, slithered over the stone steps like a lizard, only to reappear a spiral farther down.

Someone was descending ahead of them. Firm, confident steps perfectly at home. Suddenly a skid, something scattering on the floor — papers, a document, sheets flying. Silence.

Down, down they went.

But they found nothing.

At the end of that around-and-around, they came upon another door, this one covered with cushiony cockroach-infested bottle-green padding. It had a window.

Vulgar and determined, the runt opened it with a resounding kick.

The room had a high vaulted ceiling and a circular floor with inlaid bronze lettering. At the apex of the cupola was a brilliant porphyry dove. More doves decorated the rest of the ceiling, progressively diminishing in size and intensity of color from the tops of the walls to the zenith, the highest ones reduced to faded freaks, formless dull amoebae.

Red-and-purple tapestries covered the walls.

In their dense weave, amid bits of thread coming loose at the edges, stains from the humidity, holes, and burn marks, were scenes Firefly could not comprehend: a chubby white blond woman, naked, her skin iridescent, was licking the hard orange bill of a gigantic duck with greasy blue feathers, standing tall and proud like a billy goat. Down the neck of the bird slid fresh raindrops or dew; in his eyes shone a spark of desire more human than animal.

Framing that twisted coupling were garlands of orchids and sprays of royal poinciana blossoms, among which weird rollicking hybrids performed acrobatic feats: pairings of dissimilar beasts, grotesque graftings that defied understanding and parodied reason.

Atop the pistils of an open flower, alighted a flying shrimp with bat’s wings and a crown; between two leafless branches soared a mouse with fins, driven by a boat propeller.

In the tapestry’s upper-right-hand corner, as if breaking free from the woof and weft, a hummingbird reigned in fixed flight.

Seated on the little wicker chairs found in rural or impoverished churches, sullen old men trembling with impatience waited in silence, several of them in dril cien suits and straw hats that they spun nervously in their laps when they were not crossing and uncrossing their legs.

Firefly remained motionless behind the door, which had swung shut, contemplating that viscous spectacle: The rectangular glass window deformed the faces, flattening cheekbones and noses, as if someone had taken sandpaper to them.

“About time, little madam, about time,” exclaimed the most pallid and potted of the old crocks. “All the blessed night waiting for you. And now that you’re here at last, you’ve come, if I understand correctly, empty-handed. Isn’t that the case?”

A dry little cough made him shudder.

“Not at all, gentlemen, not at all,” the scrawny girl answered, feigning offense. “Surprises await. But please, a little patience.”

“Surprises? At this point?” replied the elderly man with a hint of incredulity. “So, where are they?”

“For the time being,” the withered girl responded as she backed away, “keep your eyes on the waterfall, that always calms the nerves. And have some coffee with a nice glass of cold papaya wine.”

She let out a cackle and stepped toward a folding screen set up on the other side of the room.

A large curved window of thick glass, like a jeweler’s loupe, interrupted the succession of tapestries and their grim copulations, and distorted the view of what lay beyond: a Japanese garden, complete with squares of raked sand, bonsai trees, and a waterfall, the whole of it stretched like elastic at the edges, bulging in the center, and excessively illuminated by footlights of all colors.