The Color of Summer: or The New Garden of Earthly Delights (17 page)

Shoot! And let the fire consume us both!

Though Martí fires toward the ocean, Avellaneda’s boat is raked by the flames.

M
ARTÍ
:

And now I must be off—Adios!

A
VELLANEDA
:

You would leave me here abandoned and alone,

while you go off trailing glory’s flames—oh!—

and cloudy warlike smoke

like a proud volcano?

M
ARTÍ
:

War is serious business, not a game,

and you will not be long alone.

People will soon be standing in line, shouting your

name,

waiting to hear you recite your poems.

A
VELLANEDA
:

Wait, wait—will you not heed my lamentations?

M
ARTÍ
:

Avellaneda, I have no more patience.

I long to be in the jungle, a guerrilla,

or in the middle of a cane field.

I long to hear a mockingbird again,

the palm trees whispering in the wind,

my native tongue spoken by a real Cuban,

not those hyphenates in Miami.

I want to kill the tyrant, see?

and if I must, to fall a casualty

in the color of the summer I was born in.

A
VELLANEDA
:

The heat, the infernal heat,

of the Cuban summer, I’m sure you mean.

M
ARTÍ
:

You may be right, my dear,

but I want to die
there.

A
VELLANEDA
:

You
will
leave me, then?

M
ARTÍ
:

I leave you to the waves and wind.

A
VELLANEDA
:

Don’t listen to this poor maid’s beseeching, then,

but think at least of the acclamation

that you are throwing away.

M
ARTÍ
:

My
idée fixe
takes me another way—

to Cuba. But in Key West

you will be an honored guest.

You will be treated like royalty,

as you deserve, Tula, for your poetry.

A
VELLANEDA
:

You go off on this wild-goose chase, this quest

for a will-o’-the-wisp, a chimera at best—

at worst, a nightmare in a nightmarish land;

you disdain my hand

and all that I might give

because you no longer want to live.

Is there no other choice, no other path?

M
ARTÍ
:

No, only this one. I will not turn back.

A
VELLANEDA
:

Oh, dear, oh, dear—

it is so sad to watch you disappear

into the color of that tropical summer.

As people say now—it’s a real bummer.

M
ARTÍ
:

Nonetheless, it’s what I’ve come for.

Summer is my favorite color . . .

A
VELLANEDA
:

José! José!

Where are you going on that stick horse?

M
ARTÍ
:

To die for my cause.

Martí starts to ride away on his stick horse, on the surface of the water, the flamethrower held before him.)

A
VELLANEDA
:

Indeed, I know . . .

And I am proud to see you go.

Oh, had I the courage of your convictions!

But I have only my fictions.

M
ARTÍ
:

Indeed, that’s so . . .

A
VELLANEDA
:
(to herself)

Despite my pleas that he not go,

he’s gone, gone with his flamethrower . . .

And now I hear the sound of gunfire!

Oh, what is happening to him?

Jesus! They’ve murdered him!

And me with my boat on fire.

Help me! I can’t swim!

We hear shots, then a single loud report, much closer: a member of the audience is killed, and the person’s body must be taken out of the theater immediately. Avellaneda tries desperately to put out the flames in the boat, but they only grow worse. She calls out for help. But the only reply she receives is a hail of rotten eggs from the people on the
M
ALECÓN
in
H
AVANA
and another rain of chocolate bars from the people in
K
EY
W
EST
.
And as the hail of missiles continues, the two groups now begin to shout insults at one another.

C
HORUS ON THE
M
ALECÓN
:

Traitors! Maggots!

C
HORUS IN
K
EY
W
EST
:

Pigs! Faggots!

A
VELLANEDA
:

Help me! This boat will not last!

C
HORUS ON THE
M
ALECÓN
:

Capitalist-imperialist apostles!

C
HORUS IN
K
EY
W
EST
:

Commie Marxist fossils!

A
VELLANEDA
:

Oh, I’m sinking fast!

C
HORUS IN
K
EY
W
EST
:

You socialist slugs!

C
HORUS ON THE
M
ALECÓN
:

You multinational thugs!

A
VELLANEDA
:

Oh, glug glug glug glug glug . . .

As the trading of insults continues, Avellaneda slowly sinks into the ocean. Silence. The gigantic movie screen descends. On it, we see only waves on the high seas. Then immediately we cut to a deserted park, and two statues pitted and worn by time—one of Martí and one of Avellaneda. From behind these statues appears the poet Andrés Reynaldo.

A
NDRÉS
R
EYNALDO
:

Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda wrote that a man is great only if he contributes to his country’s greatness, and that a man is free only when he is ruled by free men. José Martí wrote—or rather cried out in silence—that the beaches of exile are beautiful only when we bid them farewell. For the love of God—oh, Néstor Almendros!—get their photographs!

A blinding radiance illuminates the audience, as a flashbulb goes off. The audience has been photographed. Darkness. Curtain.

Such shit that crazy Zebro scribbles! I mean that crazy queen Zebro scribbles
shit!
The gall of that cockamamie cocksucker!—D’you suppose that skag of a scabrous Zebro doesn’t know we know his scribbling sucks? ’Course not! Zebro’s never sober, so no
way
she’d know. Just keeps rescripting other scriveners’ scribblings, hits other guitar-pickers’ licks, and expects us not to kick! Prick!
Kobra
was the last time that cocky queen’s abracadabra works with
this
sucker.

For Zebro Sardoya