papers where he’d wiped all the shit he could find, about the Other and about me, naturally. And, obviously, Alexis was also fully aware…”
The feast was finally over and I left Paris in the rain. Because springtime in Paris is so fragile: winter’s deathbed rattle can launch an attack with an impunity that is simply an awful revenge. The bad weather started without warning and the windows we left open during the day to the season’s pleasant noises and smells had suddenly to be shut, so we could see through the glass how the icy rain abused the virgin shoots on the trees in the nearby square. Two days before, I’d finished my research in the Artaud papers and also my course of master classes at the Theatre des Nations, where I’d expounded for the first time in public my new idea for a production of Electra Garrigo based on what I called a transvestite aesthetic. It was a success, in fact, my last great public success… From Sartre to Grotowski, by way of Truffaut, Nestor Almendros, Julio Cortazar and Simone Signoret, I was praised publicly and privately and was invited there and then to present the work the following season, with performances in six French cities. I was at the height of my dreams when it began to rain in Paris, as if it had never rained before, and I decided to return to the sure but merciless sun of Havana, in a feverish haste to get on with my work. Muscles accompanied me to Orly, and we could never have imagined that that embrace and kiss on my neck would be last carnal contact I’d have with him. We’d never see each other again.
As soon as I arrived I started work. I let the other directors get on with the year’s repertory and shut myself up in my house with Virgilio’s text, and began to elaborate my idea for the production. By December I had the first libretto ready, with all the sketches for the sets and costumes, the staging of scenes and acts, and a tentative cast in which actors from various groups participated, because I had to engage the best from Cuban theatre. But the sugar harvest had begun and the entire country was cutting and grinding sugar cane: even actors and theatre technicians, and I had to wait till July to have the chance to work with the actors I wanted. I wrote to Paris and explained the reasons behind the delay and they very kindly postponed the tour to the annus horribilis of 1971, and then I used the time to prepare the best ever Spanish edition of The Theatre and Its Double …
Finally, on 6 September I gathered in the theatre all those who were going to work on the project and made a first reading of the script, and explained the requirements for the stage, lighting, costumes and acting. The applause at the end, a standing ovation, convinced me beyond doubt I’d reached the gates of heaven: I only had to knock and Saint Peter would welcome me with open arms… And we started work. Although everything turned very difficult (the material for the costumes, the making of the thirty-two masks, the immaculate costume for the Centaur-Pedagogue, the scenery design), we gradually got the necessary and in January moved on from plain rehearsals to dress rehearsals on stage. What the actors had to do was really complicated and I demanded nothing short of perfection. They had to handle the masks as if they were their own faces and that meant special training, lots and lots of practice, and we spent long hours watching films of Japanese theatre. I then began to invite very specific people to see the rehearsals and they all left on cloud nine. Only Virgilio said something which, in my euphoria, I failed to register: Marques, this is better than what I wrote, more intense, more provocative, and you’ve quite thrown me arse over tit, that is, my arse is all over the place… But, my friend, it’s too turbulent and cruel and I’m afraid it’ll upset… In fact, the air was already murky, but I failed to see the danger signals coming from every direction. I’ve always had a problem believing weather forecasts. I let passion take over and shut ears and eyes to anything that’s not my single goal… And so we finally set the premiere in Havana for April and the start of the tour in France for May. And then began the last act in the affair which ended with the performance the four bureaucrats put on behind the dissecting table on the set… One day I got a call to say there were problems with the Paris trip. They’d received reports about the fairly serious moral problems during my last stay in France, and they even knew I’d lodged at Muscles’ place, that I had an ambiguous attitude to the revolutionary process and suspiciously cordial relationships with certain pseudo-revolutionary and revisionist French intellectual circles… That I’d met up with Nestor Almendros and other people who held critical attitudes, including even loyal Julio Cortazar, and it was then they started to tell me things which only two people knew, Muscles and the Other Boy. I was told the Paris embassy was fully informed about all the goings-on, and I discovered they’d lumped together lies and truth in surprising fashion: the events were real and only the Other could have told them that way, because his vulgar stamp was obvious on all they recounted, but their conclusions would have made you piss yourself with laughter if it hadn’t been so serious. There they could say anything they liked about my character, my work, my morality, my attitude, my ideology and even the way I breathed… But I still didn’t give up… I wrote to Muscles to ask him to use his influence in Paris to activate the invitations and send them the most official way possible, and I kept the April premiere date in Cuba. Then the master stroke: in one week my production said goodbye to Orestes, the Pedagogue, Clytemnestra Pla and even Electra Garrigo… I thought I’d die, but I still didn’t give up and I started to look for other actors, to the very day they summoned us all to the theatre and it was decided, in my absence, to expel me from the group by twenty-four votes for and two abstentions.
Two months later the Other Boy published an article on Cuban theatre which didn’t mention my name or work, as if I’d never existed or it were impossible I might ever exist again… I then understood there was nothing doing, or that I could do nothing but retreat into my shell, like a persecuted snail. And I let the curtain fall. I gave in and took every punishment: first, factory work, then library work, forgot theatre and publishing, trips and interviews, was transformed into a nobody. And I assumed my role as a live ghost, performed with mask and all for so long, that what you see as a white mask is now my very own face.
“Really?” the Marquess said and added, “Come with me,” and the Count followed him through the livingroom, across the bedroom and down the passage to the room which reeked of damp, ancient dust and old papers. The dramatist switched on the light and the policeman found himself surrounded by books, from the floor to the highest point of the ceiling, books the number and quality of which was incalculable, in dissimilar bindings and volumes, in various sizes and colours: books.
“Take a good look, what can you see?”
“Well, books.”
“Yes, books, but as a writer you must know when you are seeing something more. Look, that one there is the edition of Paradise Lost which I stole with illustrations by Gustave Dore. Now I’ll ask you something: who would know the name of Milton’s neighbour, a very wealthy man, much feared in his time, and one who perhaps one day accused him of some barbarity or other? You don’t know? Of course: nobody knows or should know, but everyone remembers who the poet was. And was Dante a Guelph or a Ghibeline? You don’t know that either, do you, but you do know he wrote The Divine Comedy and that his reputation is greater than that of any politician of his time. For that is what is invincible… And now I’ll tell you why I brought you here!”
And he walked over to one of the shelves and took down a red folder tied with ribbons which one day had been white and now lay under several layers of dust.
“I’ll tell you this, Friendly Policeman, because I think I owe it to you, as I owe you an apology for my excesses with you… Herein are eight plays written in my silent years, and the other folder you can see contains a 300-page essay on the re-creation of Greek myths in Western theatre in the twentieth century. What do you reckon?”
The Count gestured: shook his head.
“And why is all this hidden away? Why don’t you try to publish it?”
“Because of what I said before: my character must endure silence till the end. But that’s the character: the actor did what he had to do, and that’s why I keep writing, because, one day, as with Milton, they’ll remember the writer and nobody will even recall the sad functionary who repressed him. They wouldn’t allow me to publish or direct, but no one could prevent me writing and thinking. These two folders are my best revenge, do you understand me now?”
“I think so,” replied the Count, and caressed the typed pages of his story and realized right then that he didn’t know where he should take it. Perhaps it was only a story for three readers: himself, Skinny Carlos and Alberto Marques, and yet that was enough for him. No, he didn’t feel a need to expose himself further, or have pretensions to literature: just do it, for the Marquess was right: those pages contained what was invincible.
“I also want to apologize, Alberto. At times I must have been too rough with you.”
“Oh, my honey chil’! You’re an angel! You don’t know what it is to be rough with me. Look, if I tell you… Better not, forget it.”
The Count smiled, remembering the stories he’d heard about the Marquess’s erotic adventures, in that very house. Well, whatever they say, he is a pansy, that’s no lie, but I like the man, he concluded.
“Come on, let’s sit down,” the Marquess suggested and they went back to the sitting room, as the Count lit a
