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I. The fiery serpent
1
A Swedlish university had invited me to
some literature seminars which take place every spring. Seminars
don’t interest me, literary studies even less so, but
I thought I could use the occasion to get to know the country,
all expenses paid. For some reason that I have no wish to
try to recall — I think Sweden’s social democracy
didn’t much please those who had to authorize my voyage
— I couldn’t make my little Scandinavian tour,
So I began to exchange phone calls and correspondence with
Agneta, the course coordinator. Each conversation was warmer.
We were a year at this little game. I sent her some of my
poems. Later, she mail-ordered Dirty
Havana Trilogy, which they sent to her from Barcelona.
When she began to read those stories she called me every day,
upset. She stuttered into the telephone, and soon everything
began to have a much more intimate tone.
By sheer coincidence,
I spent Christrnas of 1998 in the Alps. I was with a woman
friend, a photographer, in a wooden cabin in the middle of
the mountains, which might seem like something out of a romantic
novel. But no, that’s exactly how it was. One gray,
cloudy, wind-swept afternoon, I was drinking whiskies while
rny friend took photos of me. As the alcohol went to my head,
I began to take off my clothes. When women look at me naked,
my dick gets hard, especially if a camera is involved. That’s
just the way I am. The photos turned out very well: me, in
the snow, totally naked, with my prick stiff. My friend printed
them in sepia and I seemed so young, with such an erect and
attractive ego, that I couldn’t resist and I sent Agneta
one of those photos as a Christmas gift.
I am a seducer. I know.
Just as there are inveterate alcoholics, people addicted to
gambling, caffeine, nicotine, marijuana, kleptomaniacs7 etcetera,
I am addícted to seduction. Sometimes the little angel
inside me tries to take control, and says: ’Don’t
be such a son of a bitch, Pedrito. Don’t you see that
you make these women suffer?’ But then up jumps the
little devil, and contradicts him: ’Go ahead. They’re
happy like that, even if it’s only for a while. And
you’re happy too. Don’t feel guilty.’
It’s a vice. I
know that seduction is a vice equal to any other. But Seducers
Anonymous doesn’t exist. lf it did, it might be able
to do something for me. Although I’m not so sure. I’d
probably make excuses not to go near their sessions, not to
have to stand up shamefaced in front of everyone, put my hand
on the Bible and serenely say: ’My name is Pedro Juan.
I’m a seducer. And today makes twenty-seven days that
I haven’t seduced anyone.’
By March, I was back
in Havana. Life was very peaceful. I was painting, experimenting
with sorne recycled rnaterials; by which I mean with garbage
¡’d collected on street corners. I had a lot of
material available to me. In the afternoons, I was drinking
rum, smoking my cigars, seducing black women or mulattas.
I adore them. You won’t catch me writing here that blacks
are superior — that would be inverse racism —
but I am convinced that we have to mix more; that we have
to provoke miscegenation, manufacture more mulattas and mulattos.
Míscegenation saves. That’s why I like black
women. Well, that’s not exactly it. When you fuck, you
don’t give a shit about anyone’s salvation. But
I do have a couple of enchanting mulatta daughters who corroborate
that idea.
Soon Agneta organized
another trip to Sweden for me from Stockholm. Though she seemed
her usual hyper-efficient self, I also sensed that she had
changed. What with the poems, the stories from the Trilogy,
and my naked photo in the alpine snow, her neuronal rhythms
were in an uproar. She called me almost daily and said things
like: ’Last night I couldn’t sleep. You’ve
got me into a state. Is everythíng you write true?’
And I answered her: ’Yes.
I have little imagination.’
And she: ’Ohhh,
will you come in the spring, Pedro Juan? Everything is set
up already. Will you come?’
2
She always called me at eight in the morning,
Havana time. Two in the afternoon in Stockholm. On the dot.
One morning in March, the telephone rang. I had been awake
for an hour but I was still lyíng down; my head propped
on three pillows, I was reading Kundera’s Immortality.
Agneta interrupted me on page 69, just as I was reading a
fragment about the repression, the brutality and the grandiosity
which power engenders: ’Goethe! Napoleon smacked his
forehead. The author of The Sufferings of Young Werther!
While on the Egyptian campaign. he had discovered that his
officers were reading this book. And as soon as he discovered
it, he became very angry. He reprimanded the officers for
reading such sentimental foolishness, and he forbade them
once and for all to read novels. Novels of any kind! Let them
read history books, they’re much more useful!’
Urnlike Agneta, I was
reading a slow, philosophical novel. I read in the few moments
of peace and relief I can find in the rnidst of this vertiginous,
chaotíc city.
To Agneta’s
questions I could only respond with the obvious: ’If
you live in a place like this, you can’t write slowly.
Here everything comes apart in your hands. Nothing lasts.
And so you have to go out to search for more. lt’s like
this every day.’ She remains silent. Two people only
allow themselves to shut up for a while and enjoy the silence
between them when they’re together, each beside the
other. But an international call costs money. Nobody spends
money to remain silent. We do. Agneta calls from her office
in the university, so we play our sensual game for free. United
by silence, we don’t speak. Finally, she interrupts
the emptiness and asks again, as she always does: ’Wíll
you come in the spring?’
© Pedro Juan Gutiérrez
This fragment is part of Tropical
Animal (British
and American
editions)
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