Guillermo Rosales - The Halfway House

“Do you want to move to a different table?” Caridad asks me at dinner time.

“Yes.”

“Don’t you like those disgusting locos ?”

“No.”

“Come on,” she says, “sit here,” and she swipes the midget Napoleon out of his seat and seats me in his place. And so I stop sitting at the untouchables’ table, with Hilda, Reyes, Pepe and René. Now I’m at a table with Eddy, Tato, Pino, Pedro, Ida and Louie. That afternoon we had rice, raw lentils, three pieces of lettuce and salpicón . I had three spoonfuls and spit the fourth out onto my plate. I left. As I pass by Mr. Curbelo’s desk, I see Arsenio eating. He’s eating on a plastic tray, brought from a nearby diner. He’s eating with a fork and knife, and his food is yellow rice, pork, yuca and red tomatoes. And beer, too.

“Hey,” he says to me when I pass by. “Take a seat.”

I sit down. He waves at me with his hand to wait until he’s done. I wait. He finishes eating. He takes all the leftovers and throws them out, along with the tray, in the waste basket. The empty can of beer, too. He burps. He looks at me with lost eyes. He takes out a pack of cigarettes and offers me one. We smoke. Then he says, “Okay … let’s get right to it. Do you want to be my assistant here?”

“No,” I say. “I’m not interested.”

“It will be great,” he advises me.

“I’m not interested.”

“Fine.” he says. “Friends?”

“Friends.” I say.

He shakes my hand.

“I am the way I am,” he says. “I smoke marijuana, I drink beer, I do blow, I do it all! But I’m a man.”

“I get you,” I say.

“I see you give the old one-eyed man a beating and I could give a shit. Now, I expect the same of you. Everything you see me do around us stays between us men. Got it?”

“Got it,” I say.

“Mafia?”

“Mafia,” I reply.

“Great.” He smiles.

I get up. I go to my room. I lie down on the bed. I don’t like what just happened. I regret having beaten the old one-eyed man. But it’s too late. I’ve gone from being a witness to being complicit in what happens in the halfway house.

I fell asleep. I dreamt that I was running naked along a wide avenue and that I was going into a house surrounded by a beautiful garden. It was Mr. Curbelo’s house. I knocked at the door and his wife answered. She was a dish. She let me hug and kiss her. She said “I’ll give you whatever you want. My name is Necessity.”

“I’ll call you Necess,” I said. And I yelled loudly, “Necess!”

Then Curbelo pulled up in his gray car. I tried to escape through the garden, but he grabbed me by the arm. My body was covered in white scales.

“Here!” screamed Curbelo, and a police car showed up in the garden. That’s when I woke up.

It was about twelve at night. The crazy guy who works in the pizza place snores like a pig. I head out, shirtless, toward the living room. There I find Arsenio and Ida, the grande dame come to ruin. Arsenio has his hand on her knee. He sticks his tongue in her ear. Ida resists. She sees me and resists even more. I pass by them and sit in the tattered armchair.

“Arsenio,” Ida says angrily, “tomorrow I’m going to tell Mr. Curbelo everything.”

Arsenio starts laughing. He touches one of her flaccid breasts. He presses himself against it.

“For God’s sake!” Ida says. “Don’t you realize I’m an old woman?”

“It’s like cod,” Arsenio says. “The older, the better.”

Then he looks at me. He knows I’m looking at him and says to me, with all familiarity, “Mafia!”

“Mafia,” I say. I light a cigarette and lean back in the armchair.

“Let me go, Arsenio,” Ida begs. But Arsenio laughs. He tries to stick his hand under the old lady’s dress. He kisses her on the mouth. “Please …,” says Ida.

“Let her go.” I say. “Let her go already.”

“Mafia?” Arsenio asks.

“Yeah, I’m part of your mafia, but leave the poor old lady alone already.”

Arsenio laughs. He lets her go unexpectedly.

Ida quickly leaves and shuts herself in her room. I hear her lock it from the inside.

“I am a beast, just like you,” I then say, looking at the ceiling. “I’m a beast.”

Arsenio gets up. He goes to his room. He throws himself onto the bed.

“Mafia!” he says from there. “Life is just one big mafia! No more.”

I’m left all alone. I smoke my cigarette. Tato, the homosexual boxer, shows up. He sits in a chair in front of me. A ray of light bathes his pockmarked face.

“Listen to this,” he says to me. “Listen to this story. Which is my story. The story of the avenger of a painful tragedy. The tragedy of a final melodrama without any prospects. The fatal coincidence of an endless tragedy. Listen to this, my story. The story of someone imperfect who thought he was perfect. And death’s tragic end, which is life. What do you think?”

“Great,” I say.

“That’s enough!” he says, and leaves.

I fall asleep.

I dreamt about Fidel Castro. He was taking refuge in a white house. I was shooting at the house with a cannon. Fidel was in briefs and an undershirt. He was missing a few teeth. He was yelling insults at me out the windows. He was saying, “ Cabrón! You’ll never get me out of here!” I was frantic. The house was already in ruins but Fidel was still inside, moving around as agile as a mountain lion. “You won’t get me out of here!” He yelled hoarsely. “You’ll never get me out!” It was Fidel’s last refuge. And even though I spent the whole dream shooting at him, I couldn’t flush him out of those ruins. I wake up. It’s already morning. I go to the bathroom. I urinate. Then I wash my face with cold water. I leave like that, dripping water, to go have breakfast. There’s cold milk, cornflakes and sugar. I only drink milk. I go back to the TV and turn it on. I settle into the armchair again. The American preacher who talks about Jesus comes on the screen.

“You, sitting there in front of the TV,” the preacher says. “Come now into the arms of the Lord.”

My mouth becomes dry. I close my eyes. I try to imagine that yes, everything he says is true.

“Oh God!” I say, “Oh God, save me!”

I remain that way for ten or twelve seconds, with my eyes closed, waiting for the miracle of salvation. Then Hilda, the decrepit old hag, taps my shoulder.

“Do you have a cigarette?”

I give her one.

“You have very, very pretty eyes!” she says sweetly.

“Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.”

I get up. I don’t know what to do. Go outside? Shut myself in my room? Sit on the porch? I go outside again. Go north? Go south? Who cares? I walk toward Flagler Street and then I turn to the left, going west, where the Cubans live. I walk on, I walk on, I walk on. I pass by dozens of bodegas, coffee shops, restaurants, barber shops, clothing stores, stores selling religious articles, tobacco shops, pharmacies, pawn shops. All of them are owned by Cuban petit bourgeois who arrived fifteen or twenty years ago, fleeing the communist regime. I stop in front of a shop mirror and comb my messy, straw-colored hair with my fingers. Then, it seems like someone is yelling “son of a bitch” at me. I turn around, furious. There’s only an old blind man walking with a cane on the sidewalk. I walk on a little more along Flagler Street. I spend my last bit of change on a sip of coffee. I see a cigarette on the floor. I pick it up and bring it to my lips. Three women working in the coffee shop start laughing. I think they’ve seen me pick up the cigarette and I’m infuriated. It seems like one of them says, “There he goes! The wandering Jew!” I leave.

The sun beats down strongly on my head. Thick beads of sweat run like lizards down my chest and armpits. I walk on, I walk on, I walk on. Without looking anywhere in particular. Without searching for anything. Without going anywhere. I go into a church called San Juan Bosco. There’s silence and air conditioning. I look around. Three believers are praying at the foot of the altar. An old woman stops before a statue of Jesus and touches his feet. Then she takes out a dollar and sticks it in an offering box. She lights a candle. She whispers her prayer. I walk along the aisle and sit in a pew at the back of the church. I take out the book of Romantic English poets and open it at random. It’s a poem by John Clare, born in 1793, died in 1864 in the asylum of Northampton.