Guillermo Rosales - The Halfway House

“Frances!” I say. “Oh, Frances!”

“Yes, my angel,” she says.

“Oh, Frances!”

“Yes, my angel, yes …”

I take her by the hand and take her to her room. It’s the women’s room and it has a lock on the inside. We go in. I lock the door. I take her gently over to the bed and remove her shoes.

“Oh, Frances!” I say, kissing her feet.

“Yes, my angel.”

Hastily, I remove her panties. I spread her legs.

She has pretty brown fuzz. I kiss it anxiously. While I kiss her, I take out my throbbing sex. I know that the minute I enter her, I’ll ejaculate. But I don’t care.

“Frances,” I say. “Frances.”

I start to penetrate her slowly. While I do so, I kiss her frantically on the mouth. Then I shudder to the very marrow of my bones and a wave of lava comes from deep inside of me and floods her inside.

“Yes, my angel.” Frances says.

And I lie there, as if I were dead, with my ear to her chest. I feel her delicate hand beating softly on my back, as if I were a newborn who had hiccupped at the breast.

“Yes, my angel, yes …”

I pull out. I sit on the edge of the bed. I take my hand to her very thin neck and squeeze slowly.

“Yes, my angel, yes …”

I close my eyes. I take a deep breath. I squeeze a little more.

“Yes … yes …”

I squeeze tighter. Until she gets red in the face and her eyes fill up with tears. Then I stop squeezing.

“Oh, Frances!” I say, kissing her sweetly on the mouth.

I get up from the bed and straighten my pants. She straightens her clothes and also jumps up from the bed, searching for her shoes with her feet. I leave the room and go back to the tattered armchair to watch my favorite preacher again. It’s the end of the show. The preacher, seated at a piano, sings the blues with a splen-did black man’s voice:

There’s just one way

And it’s not easy to get there

Oh Lord!

I know.

I know.

I know it’s not easy to reach You.

Mr. Curbelo arrived at ten. He goes directly to the kitchen where Caridad, Josefina and another employee named Tía, who occasionally cleans up the retards Pepe and René, are waiting for him. They meet. From the porch, I see Curbelo talking to his employees with gusto. Then he claps his hands and they disperse. All of a sudden, everything’s a rush of frantic activity. Arsenio runs around the rooms placing large rolls of toilet paper at the foot of every bed. Caridad the mulata sends Pino, the peon, to bring, as a matter of urgency, a piece of ham for the stew from the bodega. Josefina runs from room to room armed with a broom to clear the cobwebs from the corners and ceilings. Tía, loaded down with sheets and clean towels, runs quickly through the halls changing dirty, pissed-on bed sheets. Curbelo himself breezes easily through the living room and lays new rugs, brought hastily from his own house, down over the dirty, peeling floor.

“Inspection!” Tía says as she walks by me. “Today government inspectors are coming!”

And so tablecloths are laid over the tables, a water fountain is installed, clean clothes are given out to the more terrifying cases, such as Reyes, Castaño and Hilda. Perfume is sprayed on the old, sweat-stained furniture and new silverware, wrapped in fine cloth napkins, is placed on the dining room table in front of every chair.

“The old fox!” says Ida, the grande dame come to ruin, who stands next to me and eyes Curbelo with hatred as he straightens up, cleans and disguises everything. “He’s the most repulsive thing here.”

I believe it. I also watch that old sleazebag, hating his bourgeois face and voice, and how he sponges up what little blood is left in our veins. I also think that you have to be made of the same stuff as hyenas or vultures to own this halfway house.

I stand up. I don’t know what to do. I go toward my room slowly in search of the book of English poets. I want to reread poems by John Clare, the crazy poet from Northampton. As I turn down the hall that leads to my room, I see old one-eyed Reyes urinating in a corner like a frightened dog. As I walk by him, I raise my hand and bring it down forcefully on his frail shoulder. He shudders, terrified.

“Mercy …,” he says. “Have mercy on me.”

I look at him, disgusted. His glass eye swims in yellow pus. His whole body reeks of urine.

“How old are you?” I ask.

“Sixty-five,” he says.

“What did you used to do in Cuba?”

“I sold clothes, in a store.”

“Did you live well?”

“Yes.”

“How so?”

“I had my own house, a wife, a car …”

“What else?”

“On Sundays, I played tennis at the Havana Yacht Club. I used to dance. I went to parties.”

“Do you believe in God?”

“Yes, I believe in our Lord Jesus Christ.”

“Will you go to heaven?”

“I think so.”

“Will you also urinate up there?”

He is silent. Then he looks at me with a pained smile.

“I won’t be able to avoid it,” he says.

I bring my fist up again and let it fall on his dirty, unkempt head forcefully. I’d like to kill him.

“Have mercy, man,” he says to me, exaggerating his anguish. “Have mercy on me.”

“What was your favorite song when you were young?”

“ Blue Moon ,” he replies without hesitation.

I don’t say anything more. I turn my back on him and continue on to my room. I get to my bed and look for the book of English Romantic poets under my pillow. I stick it in my pocket and head back out to the porch. As I pass the women’s room, I see Frances sitting on her bed, drawing something on a piece of paper. I get closer. She stops drawing and looks at me, smiling sadly.

“Worthless things,” she says, showing me her work.

I take it in my hands. It’s a portrait of Mr. Curbelo. It’s done in the style of primitive artists. It’s very good, and it admirably reflects the stinginess and smallness of the subject. She hasn’t left out the desk, the telephone and the pack of Pall Malls that Curbelo always has out in front of him. Everything is exact. It also breathes its own life, that childish, captivating life that only a primitive’s drawings can transmit.

“I have more,” she says, opening a folder. I take them all and leaf though them.

“They’re quite good!” I say.

There they (we) all are, the halfway house’s inhabitants. Caridad, the mulata whose hardened face still retains a distant flicker of goodness. There’s one-eyed Reyes, with his glass eye and his fox’s smile. There’s Eddy, the nut who is well-versed in international politics, with his ever-present expression of impotence and bottled rage. There’s Tato, with his groggy boxer’s face and his lost look. And there’s Arsenio, with his devilish eyes. And there I am, with a face that is both hardened and sad at the same time. She’s really good! She has captured all of our souls.

“Do you know that you’re a good painter?”

“No,” says Frances. “I have no technique.”

No,” I say to her. “You’re already a painter. Your technique is primitive, but it’s very good.”

She takes her drawings out of my hands and puts them back in the folder.

“They’re worthless,” she says with a sad smile.

“Listen,” I say, sitting down next to her. “I swear that … pay attention. Let me say this to you and believe me, please. You are a tremendous artist. You are. I’m telling you. I’m here, in this disgusting house , and I’m practically a phantom of myself. But I’m telling you that I know something about art. You are amazing. Do you know who Rousseau was?”

“No,” she says.