Guillermo Rosales - Leapfrog and Other Stories

The author of the two books that make up Leapfrog & Other Stories did everything he could so that none of this would make it into the reader’s hands. His favorite method was fire. I know of at least two great novels and an epic poem totaling over one hundred pages that he threw into the flames. I think it was, above all, an act of courage and not of madness. And I don’t think there’s anyone else in the world, beside his sister Leyma, who can speak with authority about Guillermo. After having written the last word of each of each creation, he seemed to give them a certain life span, and if in a given period of time his editor (or anyone else) didn’t show any interest, then he condemned them, without hesitation, to the flames. It could also have been a reflection of the visceral disdain he felt for the world around him. Destruction at the end of the torturous path to creation seemed a relief to him. But no one knows about the books I am referring to because no one read them. I had had before me the novel Socrates and his epic poem The Hero of Yaguajay , about Commander Camilo Cienfuegos (I can still hear his evil, mocking laughter when he said, “If they only knew I’m doing an imitation of Quasimodo!”). And I had read his novel about the origins of Cuban rum and the wars of independence, with that amusing episode about General Shafter’s landing on Daiquiri Beach, to the east of Santiago de Cuba. And I’d read the story, “Colonel, it’s Puny Speaking,” and another novel no one talks about but that concerns a battle against Batista on an imaginary mountain in the Sierra Maestra — la Taguara — with Camilo Cienfuegos again as the main character. I can’t believe none of them exist now. Worse still, these stunning and unique literary works did exist and not even their ashes remain. Can you imagine what American literature would be without a Poe or a Wolfe, or French literature without Baudelaire or Camus, or Russian literature without Artsybashev or Akhmatova, just to name the most secretive and hidden writers? Well, then we Cubans have to accept our own national literature without Guillermo Rosales.

Our friendship began on his first day of work as a journalist for the magazine Mella , in the summer of 1961. He was 15 years old and hadn’t read Hemingway, much less Faulkner, but he gave me a run for my money with his encyclopedic knowledge of the great Will Eisner’s The Spirit . It was our shared culture as Cuban kids who grew up in the 1950s. This is tangible on the pages of Leapfrog , a book written by Guillermo very early in the 1960s and which he ended up naming very differently from how we first knew it in its initial Spanish edition. It was originally called Holy Saturday, Resurrection Sunday . It escaped the bonfire because Delia, his loving mother, went around picking up the pieces of paper and wrinkled sheets that her son left lying around as he was writing. The stories in The Magic Still have a different history. Guillermo was already living in Miami when he sent them to a friend in Washington so she could organize them and make a clean copy. In the editing process, Rosa Berra, the friend he’d known since the 1960s in Havana, made a digital transcription (computers were beginning to take over the market) and that is how the book was saved. We can assume that in 1993, when Guillermo made the decision to destroy himself, he wasn’t going to leave his unpublished books at the mercy of unknown hands rummaging about.* So he proceeded, with as much disdain as meticulousness, to burn the thick bundle of his novel about rum and Cuba’s liberators and any papers he had left in his drawers. Later, he put the barrel of a gun to his temple, metal that was cold to the touch. A Cuban exile community which doesn’t understand him and which distorts him (and in the end, can’t stand him) has yielded few readers. Perhaps he did well to throw it all to the flames.

NORBERTO FUENTES

* He committed suicide on July 9, 1993

April 12, 1957

It was the big night: the infamous Luthor had made a pact with the Men of Clay. Pat Patton was calling Dick Tracy urgently on his wrist radio to confidentially communicate Breathless Mahoney’s secret: Darling O’Shea, the richest and most spoiled child in the world, was having fun on Black Island removing The Blank’s masks. The Spirit was dying, pecked at by that vulture Mr. Carrion, but he reappeared in the next story chasing after Splinter Weevil, “The Meanest Man in the World.” Everything was like that. The island was made of cork and would never sink. The West Side Boys raped fat Tubby and crucified Little Lulu in Hunchback Alley.

Tapón was living in his mountain house at the time and Denny Dimwit insisted on trying to launch himself to the moon in a barrel. Mama Pepita was withering away amid her childhood photos and Papa Lorenzo was dreaming of the dynamite train full of Stalin’s Cossacks and meanwhile ran his finger over the cartoon page of the National Daily News and said, “This country really likes its comic strips.”

In any event, Felix the Cat had taken flight dangling from a question mark. Mr. Hubert strolled through the park with his dogs, and Aunt Dorita was complaining that boys in the tropics were spawns of criminality.

“I’m a.45 pistol,” the story from Paquín magazine read. “I’m made of hate. Hate. HATE.”

Gaspar Pumariega had just then put up a giant television tower that deeply disturbed Don Mestre, the Channel Six magnate, and he appeared on the screen at night wolfing down chorizos with bread and raffling off Philips blenders.

Grandma Hazel, like the witch in “Macabre Stories,” was stirring her cauldron with a slotted spoon and terrified Agar with Jehovah’s finger. She believed in God but in the meantime, voted for the Communist Party even though she knew that if they won, the communists would put an end to her door-to-door food delivery business.

Meanwhile, in the far-off West, Wild Bill Hickock was having his definitive duel with Wyatt Earp, and Dean Martin was recovering his lost honor on the banks of the Rio Bravo.

The neighbors were sleeping at Santa Fe beach. The television sets and radios weren’t on, and the pressure cookers had cooled off on the kitchen tiles. Manuel Castillo, the night watchman, gave a lazy yawn on one of the park benches and then let his gaze fall over the dimmed houses. In one of them a boy was dreaming of monsters from outer space; and on the other side of the world, a mongoloid child was masturbating alone amid lotus flowers.

At One, Leapfrog

There was the fall; Tommy Tomorrow’s spaceship had broken down in space and they were all falling into the void. It was always like that. Falling, falling, and then the abrupt awakening. Waking up terrified in a pool of sweat, with the sheets stuck to his body.

“Grandma Hazel, why do I always fall when I’m sleeping?”

“It’s Jehovah letting go of your hand,” Grandma Hazel would say.

“Papa Lorenzo, why do people fall when they’re asleep?”