Mona and Other Tales Read online

  Since in the face of the most outlandish circumstances we always search for logical explanations, I rationalized what I had seen as purely an effect produced by the heavy fog usual in that place. Anyway, my instinct told me it was better to keep silent and close my eyes. I felt Elisa sliding into bed next to me. Her hand, with unerring skill, caressed my genitals. “Are you alseep?” she asked. I opened my eyes as if waking up from a deep sleep and saw, next to me, her perfectly serene, smiling face. The color of her hair seemed to have grown even more intense. She kept caressing me, and even though I could not dismiss my misgivings, we embraced until we were totally fulfilled.

  I have already been imprisoned for three days, and I believe I don’t have three more days to live. So I must hurry. . . . This morning I was again shouting that I didn’t want to be left alone. By noon the prison psychiatrist was sent to see me. I let him know I was not interested and answered his questions curtly. Not only because I knew he would do nothing for me, since, unfortunately, I am not crazy, but also because his interview, his stupid questions, were a waste of time, a waste of the precious little time I have left and that I must use to finish this story, send it to a friend, and see if he can do anything. Though I doubt it, I must go on.

  We were back in New York City by nine-thirty in the morning, truly record time. Elisa had kept asking me to go very fast because, she claimed, she had to be at the Greek consulate at ten. At a red light on Fifth Avenue, she suddenly leaped off and began to run, saying that she would come to see me the next day at Wendy’s. And she did. She came around nine P.M. to tell me she would be waiting for me when I left work—that is, at three in the morning. This was our agreement. But with all I had seen, or thought I had seen, plus the attraction Elisa exerted on me (or should I call it love?), I concluded that, as a matter of life and death, I had to find out who this woman really was.

  On the pretext of sharp stomach pains, I left Wendy’s without bothering to take off my uniform, and cautiously began to follow Elisa rather closely. At Broadway and 44th, she made a phone call, then started walking toward the theater district. On 47th Street, someone, who evidently was waiting for her, opened the door of a limousine, and Elisa got in. I was only able to see a masculine hand helping her in. It was easy to get a taxi and follow the limo, which stopped at 172 East 89th Street. The chauffeur opened the door, and Elisa and her companion went into the apartment building. To keep warm, I waited inside a telephone booth. An hour later, that is, around ten-thirty, Elisa came out. With my experience, I could tell that she had enjoyed a long and satisfying sexual encounter. She looked at her watch and started walking toward Central Park. She reached 79th and approached a bench where a young man was sitting, obviously waiting for her. I thought (I am sure of it) that he was the person Elisa had phoned from Broadway. The dialogue now was as short as the phone call had been. Without any fuss, they disappeared into the shrubbery. Unseen, I was able to watch how quickly and easily the pair coupled. Dry leaves crackled under their bodies, and their panting scared away the squirrels, which clambered up the trees, screeching loudly. The whole thing lasted about an hour and a half, since by twelve-thirty Elisa was taking a leisurely walk in the 42nd Street porno district. Boldly, without any shame, she would ogle the men who passed obviously looking for a woman or something like that. Farther down the street, Elisa stopped in front of a towering, handsome black man standing by the door of a peep show. I was not able to hear their conversation, of course, but it seemed that Elisa got straight to the point: in less than five minutes they were inside one of the booths at the peep show. They stayed locked up in there for more than half an hour. When they came out, the young black man seemed exhausted; Elisa was radiant. It was now two o’clock in the morning, and she was still cruising around the area. A few seconds later I saw her, accompanied by three jocks who looked like hillbillies, entering a booth at the Black Jack peep show. Fifteen minutes later, the door slammed open and she came out, looking quite pleased. I did not wait to see the men’s faces. . . . When I saw Elisa (now with a Puerto Rican who looked very much like a pimp) go into another peep show, the one on 8th Avenue between 43rd and 44th, I realized that my “fiancée” would not come to me late that night, as she had promised. And in spite of what I had been witnessing, I could not but feel a sense of total loss. Elisa was the woman with whom I had fallen in love, for the first time. . . . But at quarter to three, she came out of the peep show and started walking toward Wendy’s. To be with her once more, I obliterated everything I had seen and started running, so I’d be there, waiting, when she came. The cashier and the other employees were puzzled to see me taking my post behind the glass wall. Elisa was there in no time, and together we went to my room.

  That night in bed she was extraordinarily demanding, more so than ever, which is saying a lot. In spite of my desire and my extensive experience, it was not easy to satisfy her. Though after the encounter I pretended to fall asleep, I did not sleep a wink. What I had seen had left me totally perplexed. Of course, I could not tell her I had spied on her, could not appear jealous, though in all truth I was. Actually, I did not think I had the right to demand fidelity from her, since at no point had we vowed to be faithful to each other.

  It was close to nine o’clock in the morning when, while I pretended to be asleep, she woke up, dressed in silence, and went out without saying good-bye. But I was obsessed (though now I regret it) with following that woman and finding out where she lived, who she really was. . . . At 43rd and Eighth she took a taxi. I took another. While following her, nodding in my seat, I wondered if it was possible for Elisa to be on her way to another tryst. She was not. After such a turbulent night, Elisa seemed to want to find inner peace by looking at works of art. At least that is what I thought when I saw her get out of the taxi and hurriedly enter the Metropolitan Museum, just at the moment it was opening its doors. After paying for admission, I rushed inside the building and went up to the second floor, following the route she had taken. I watched her go into one of those large galleries, and right there, in front of my eyes, she disappeared. I looked for her for hours throughout the immense building, without any success. I did not skip any possible corner. I looked behind every statue, went around every amphora (there are some enormous ones) and even searched inside them. On one occasion I got lost among countless sarcophagi and centuries-old mummies, while calling Elisa’s name out loud. Once out of that labyrinth, I found myself in a temple of the time of the Ptolemies (according to a placard)5 seemingly floating in a pool. I searched everywhere in that enormous pile of stones, but Elisa was not there either. About three in the afternoon I went back to my room and threw myself on the bed.

  I woke up at two in the morning. In a rush, I put on my uniform and left for Wendy’s. My boss, who had always been pretty decent to me, told me that this was no time to start working; it was almost time to leave. I detected a tinge of sadness in his voice when he informed me that the next time this happened I would be fired. I assured him there would be no next time, and I went back to my room. Elisa was waiting by the door. I was not even surprised that she had been able to enter my building, though the front door is always locked and only the tenants have keys. She said she had been at Wendy’s several times and I was not there, so she decided to wait for me in my house. We went into my room, and perhaps because I had slept for hours or because I was afraid I would never see her again, I made love to her with renewed passion. Yes, that night, I believe, I was the clear victor. But how many duels—I sadly asked myself—had she fought today before coming to me? . . . At dawn, when I again started an attack, sliding over her naked body, I saw that Elisa had no breasts. I jumped to the edge of the bed, wondering whether this woman was driving me insane. As if sensing my anguish, she immediately pulled me over with her arms to her beautiful breasts.

  As on the previous day, Elisa got up around nine, dressed quickly, and went out. Her destination was the same, the Metropolitan Museum. And again she disappeared in front of my eyes.
r />   She did not come to see me at work Thursday or Friday. On Saturday I got up early, determined to find her. I must add that, independent of all the mystery surrounding her person, which fascinated me, I felt the urge to go to bed with her immediately.

  I took a taxi to the Metropolitan. Evidently there was a relationship between Elisa and that building, and I thought it was sort of stupid of me not to have realized before that she must be a museum employee, which explained why she was so interested in getting there at ten o’clock, when the doors opened to the public. My mistake had been to search for her among the visitors instead of in the offices.

  I searched for her everywhere. I inquired at the information desk and in the staff office. There was no employee named Elisa. Of course, the fact that she told me her name was Elisa did not mean that was really her name; quite the contrary, perhaps. Anyone who worked among so many valuable objects (which for me, by the way, didn’t mean a thing) and carried on sexually as she did, had to take precautions.

  So I tried to find her physically among the numerous women who worked at the museum. While I was looking over the female guards, I noticed in one room a large group representing many nationalities (Japanese, South Americans, Chinese, Indians, Germans) gathered around a painting, while several guards, almost shouting, were trying to prevent the taking of photographs. Maybe I can find Elisa among them, I thought, and pushed my way into the crowd. And in fact, there she was. Not among those taking the photos, nor among the guards warning that this was not permitted, but inside the very painting everyone was looking at. I got as close as the red cord that served as barrier between painting and public would allow. That woman, with her straight, dark reddish hair and perfect features, with one hand placed delicately over the other wrist, was smiling almost impudently, against a background that seemed to be a road leading to a misty lake. The woman was, without any doubt, Elisa. I thought then that the mystery had been solved: Elisa was a famous, exclusive artists’ model. That was why it was so difficult to find her. At that moment she was probably posing for another painter, perhaps as good as the one who had made this perfect portrait of her.

  Before asking one of the guards where I could find the model for the painting that so many people wanted to photograph, I got closer in order to see it in greater detail. Next to the frame, a small placard stated that it was painted in 1505 by one Leonardo da Vinci. Stunned, I backed up to take a good look at the canvas. My eyes then met Elisa’s intense gaze in the painting. I held her gaze and discovered that Elisa’s eyes had no eyelashes; she had the eyes of a serpent.

  The prison bell is again announcing it is bedtime. I will have to continue this report tomorrow. I must rush, since I believe I have no more than two days left to live.

  Of course, no matter how much the woman in the painting resembled Elisa, it was impossible for her to have been the model. So I quickly tried to find a reasonable explanation for the phenomenon. According to the small catalog at the gallery’s entrance, the painting was valued at many millions of dollars (more than eighty million, the catalog read).6 The woman in the picture (according to the same catalog) was European. And so was Elisa. The woman in the picture then could be one of Elisa’s remote ancestors. Therefore Elisa could be the owner of that painting. And since it was so valuable, Elisa could travel with it for security reasons and would come and inspect it every morning. Then, after checking that nothing had happened to it during the night, which is the time when most thieves choose to operate, she would withdraw to another area of the museum. Now her pains to hide her identity seemed clear to me. She was a nymphomaniac millionaire who, for obvious reasons, had to keep her sexual relationships anonymous.

  I have to admit I enjoyed the idea of being associated with a woman who had so many millions. Perhaps, if I played my cards right and pleased her in every way (and this was my heart’s desire), Elisa would help me out and I could someday open my own Wendy’s. In my enthusiasm I was forgetting the eccentricities and the imperfections, the defects, anomalies, or whatever you want to call them, that at certain moments I detected in her.

  Now the only thing I had to do was to be pleasant, to allow no interest in money, and not to bother her with indiscreet questions. I bought a bunch of roses from a stand that, being on Fifth Avenue, charged me fifteen dollars, and I went to wait for Elisa at the front entrance of the museum, because if she was inside—and I was sure she was—sooner or later she would have to come out. But she did not. With my bunch of roses, I remained at my post, under a New York drizzle, until ten o’clock, when the museum closed on Fridays.7

  When I got to Wendy’s it was eleven P.M. I was three hours late. I was fired then and there. Before leaving, I gave the roses to the cashier.

  After walking around Broadway until very late, I returned to my room in a state of depression. Elisa was there, waiting for me. As usual, she was elegantly dressed, and this time she was carrying a camera, a very expensive professional one. I invited her in and told her about my being fired. “Don’t worry,” she said. “With me on your side, you won’t have any problem.” And I believed her, thinking of her fortune, and so I asked her to get into bed with me. Because the first thing a man must do to keep on good terms with a woman is to invite her to his bed; even though she may not accept at the beginning, or maybe ever, she will always be grateful. . . . Strangely enough, she did not accept. She asked me to go to bed alone because she had to meditate (“concentrate,” I remember now, is the exact word she used) on a project she had to work on the following day, Saturday—though since the sun was almost out, it was already Saturday.

  I thought it was best to obey my future boss, and I went to bed alone, though, of course, I did not intend to sleep. Awake but snoring lightly, I observed her discreetly. She walked back and forth in my studio for over two hours while mumbling unintelligible gibberish. I could make out “the inventors . . . the interpreters” at one point. Though I am not even sure of that, for Elisa was talking faster and faster, and her pace seemed to keep rhythm with her words. Finally she took off her splendid dress and went out the window, naked, onto the fire escape. With her hands uplifted and her head tilted back, as if in position to receive an extraordinary gift from the skies (now gray and overcast), she remained outside on the landing for hours, indifferent to the cold and even to a freezing drizzle, which was getting heavier. About one in the afternoon she came back in and, “waking” me, said she needed to go do some work in the mountain town we had visited. It seemed she had to take some photos representing the region.

  Soon on our way, we got there before dusk. The streets were deserted or, rather, filled with mounds of purple leaves, which moved in eddies from place to place. We stayed at the same hotel (or motel) as before; it was so quiet, we seemed to be its only guests. Before dark we went out into town, and she began to take some photos of houses still in the light. (If I appear in some of those photos, it’s because she asked me to pose for her.) We went to the restaurant that reminded me of La Bodeguita del Medio. I noticed that Elisa had a ravenous appetite. Without losing her elegant composure, she downed several portions of soup, pasta, cream sauce, roast, bread, and dessert, besides two bottles of wine. Then she asked me to take her for a walk. The streets were narrow and badly lit, and after coming out of a place that so resembled La Bodeguita del Medio, it seemed as if I were back in Havana during my last years there. But what most brought me back to those days was a sensation of fear, of terror, even, which seemed to emanate from every corner and every object, including our own bodies. Night had fallen, and though there was no moon, there was a radiant luminosity in the sky. The usual evening fog enveloped everything, even ourselves, in a gray mist that blurred all silhouettes. Finally we reached a yellowish esplanade, which no car seemed to have crossed ever before. Elisa was walking ahead with all her equipment. The road narrowed and disappeared between dim promontories that looked like tapering, greenish rocks. Or like withered cypresses linked by a strange viscosity. On the other side of the promontori
es we came upon a lake, also greenish and covered by the same nebulous vegetation. Elisa deposited her expensive equipment on the ground and looked at me. As she talked, her face, her hair, and her hands seemed to glow.

  “Il veleno de la conoscenza é una della tante calamitá di cui so fre l’essere umano,” she said, her eyes fixed on me. “Il veleno della conoscenza o al meno quello della curiositá.”8

  “I don’t understand a word,” I blurted out in all sincerity.

  “Well, I want you to understand. I have never killed anybody without first telling him why.”

  “Who are you going to kill?” I asked her with a smile, to let her know I was not taking her words seriously.

  “Listen to me, you fool,” she said, stepping away from me while I, pretending not to understand, tried to embrace her. “I know everything you did. Your trips to the museum, your incessant surveillance, your detective work. Your pretended snoring did not fool me either. Of course, until now your stupidity and your cowardice have prevented you from seeing things as they are. Let me help you. There is no difference between what you saw in the painting at the museum and me. We are one and the same thing.”