The Color of Summer: or The New Garden of Earthly Delights (62 page)

But the market in wood was one aspect of Clara’s merchandising that had been cornered by Skunk in a Funk and the Key to the Gulf from the beginning. Knowing that one of the most pressing problems of Old Havana (and the Island as a whole) was housing, Skunk in a Funk realized that with the wood that paneled the caissoned and coffered ceilings of the convent, she could fashion barbecue grills—the wonderful loftlike structures that she had constructed for herself and, of course, Clara—for custom home installation in
other
people’s rooms. I mean, is there anyone who lives in a tiny room in a dilapidated building who
doesn’t
want to expand? And if you consider the height of the ceilings in the buildings in Old Havana, you can see how easy it would be to build barbecue grills—and the tenants wouldn’t even have to give themselves a concussion every time they stood up.

And so, under the leadership genius of Skunk in a Funk, and with the invaluable aid of the Key to the Gulf and a small team of helpers (such as Teodoro Tampon and Lutgardito), Old Havana became the only city in the world that grew
inward.
The barbecue grill, designed by Skunk in a Funk, was soon the absolute rage, an inspired solution to the problem of urban housing. At any hour of the night, Skunk in a Funk and the Key to the Gulf (who was now sleeping at Skunk’s place) might be awakened by some desperate housewife who wanted to separate from her husband and so needed a barbecue grill. New mothers urgently needed barbecue grills. Queens who wanted to move out of the family home (or even to have a good screw above their families’ heads) practically screamed for their barbecue grills.

Construction of the barbecue grill was undertaken on the basis of an oral contract, with payment of one-half the total cost required up front; when the grill was finished, the client had to pay the other half or the barbecue grill would be dismantled and whisked away on the instant. The barbecue grills had to be put up at night and in complete silence, of course, since otherwise Fifo would root them out and punish them as “clandestine constructions.” And yet almost the entire population of Old Havana, including Fifo’s secret police, turned a blind eye on the proliferation of these constructions (with which so many of those very secret police solved the problem of a place to live), or even collaborated in the feverish work. In a single night, almost all the rooms in the Hotel Monserrate doubled in size, and although the din of hammering was terrible, nobody seemed to hear a thing. . . . For people of limited means, Skunk in a Funk designed a half-grill, which was a sort of interior balcony or mezzanine cantilevered from one wall of a little room.

Every piece of wood in the convent—the columns, brackets and supports, uprights, coffered ceilings, and the pine laths and sheathing that the coffering had been attached to—all of it was stripped from the building.

At any hour of the day or night, Skunk in a Funk or the Key to the Gulf might be seen up on the distant ceiling of the nave—saw, hammer, or crowbar in hand—pulling down the glorious paneling, which would boom and creak like the rigging of a ship. Then they would cross the city with their cargo and that very night put up two (or twenty) barbecue grills.

As the demand for the improvised housing grew more and more insistent—three comandantes in Fifo’s army requisitioned six barbecue grills—there came a moment when the wood simply ran out. Then, at Clara’s suggestion, Skunk in a Funk’s associates set out to pull down the interior walls of the convent and dismantle all the tilework. That way, if a person couldn’t have a barbecue grill he could at least build a wall and enjoy a degree of privacy. Other people used the tiles to build dovecote-like sheds up on their roofs. Teodoro Tampon would patiently scrape the tiles and bricks before they were sent off to their buyers.

One day, as they were pulling down one of the thick interior walls, the demolition team discovered a sealed chamber containing five enormous iron safes. “The nuns’ treasure!” exclaimed Lutgardito. While Clara, Coco, and SuperChelo sang at the top of their lungs to drown out the noise, Lutgardito, Skunk in a Funk, and Teodoro took sledgehammers to the strongboxes. But they were all empty. The only thing they found was the last will and testament of one of the first nuns in the convent—before it was even officially the Convent of Santa Clara—who had left all her worldly goods to the pirate William Morgan “for his constant loyalty to my person.” But Lutgardito argued that if the nuns barely had time to flee with the shirts or habits or whatever they had on their backs, they couldn’t possibly have carried their fortune back to Spain, which meant that they had buried it—and it was still somewhere in the convent!

So they bought picks, shovels, and crowbars on the black market and began the excavation. The entire building suddenly became pockmarked with deep holes, and they even dug under the main altar, which Clara had refused to sell. But the treasure was not to be found.

They did unearth a cemetery for newborn babies—a common grave full of tiny bones. Apparently that was the way the nuns had covered up their forbidden love affairs, or the fruits of them. With great solemnity the treasure hunters reburied the bones, and all further excavations were suspended.

“Why, we might have come across the bones of Christopher Columbus if we’d gone on with this,” said Clara.

When the last shovelful of earth had been spread over the grave, Lutgardito, furious and discouraged, rammed his crowbar into the ground. And suddenly, there spurted forth a liquid so precious in Old Havana, and the entire Island, that it was probably worth
more
than the fabled nuns’ treasure. It was water—
water!
Unwittingly they had broken into an underground cistern. The water pressure in Old Havana was so low, and there was so little water to begin with, that it seldom reached the faucets of the old city, but the cistern had been dug at such a low point that rainwater would accumulate in it. Everyone, Clara herself included, decided to bathe in those miraculous waters. Then they all agreed on a plan to sell water wholesale and retail throughout Old Havana. They would sell it in cans, in buckets, by the gallon, by the liter, or even by the glass.

The lines outside Clara’s room sometimes stretched down the stairs and around the block.

Lutgardito, Teodoro Tampon, Skunk in a Funk, and the Key to the Gulf would spend the entire day climbing down into the convent and hauling up containers filled with water, which Clara would sell at the door. Then, thanks to Clara’s contacts with the chairwoman of the Watchdog Committee (who by now was practically her best friend), they got a pump and a hose, and the water could be pumped right to the front door and the infinitely snaking line.

Late at night, Skunk in a Funk and the Key to the Gulf would go back to the Hotel Monserrate and make the barbecue grill shake and shiver. Sometimes there would be so much friction as the wooden boards rubbed together that the grill would give off the wonderful fragrance of freshly cut cedar. Night after night, the two carpenters made passionate love, but one thing kept it all from being perfect: the creaking of the wood and the rattling of the empty bottles that Skunk in a Funk was jealously hiding under the bed (which was also made of aromatic cedar) drove the Key to the Gulf crazy. Several times he tried to throw them out the window, but Skunk in a Funk would have none of it. Finally, the Key to the Gulf resigned himself to the noise, perhaps because Skunk in a Funk built free barbecue grills for his mother, his girlfriend of the moment, and several of his country cousins in the little town of Guane, in Pinar del Rio.

“Almost everybody has a barbecue grill now,” Skunk in a Funk would say whenever she had a visitor. “But mine is unique, because it is made of the cedars of Lebanon. I chose the wood myself. When I make love, I can almost hear the Song of Songs.”

For weeks the convent had been completely denuded of wood, and now, with the removal of the bricks and tiles, there were no more halls, or columns, or interior walls, or coffered ceiling. The only thing, really, that remained of the convent was the immense shell of the building with its thick outer walls, the high altar, and a roof that consisted only of transparent sheets of plastic. Of course the huge studded front door was still closed and barred and locked with a huge padlock and sealed with the official Urban Reform seal. But inside, what had once been a beautiful convent looked like a slave barracks, or a bullring, or a gothic cathedral after an earthquake. The floor was nothing but earth tamped down with infinite patience by Teodoro Tampon. There was nothing left to sell except water. Realizing that something had to be done, and fast, or she’d be forced to close up shop, Clara used the hose to wet down the entire plot, and then she planted tomatoes. The tomato farm kept all of Old Havana supplied with tomatoes for several months, but weeds at last choked out the tomato plants. Undaunted, Clara planted aloe, rosemary, basil, and all sorts of other aromatic and medicinal plants among the weeds—even a bed of impressive cape jasmine that perfumed the whole building. People said that Clara, who knew not only herbal medicine but also magic, planned to plant a clandestine herbarium in the convent and offer private consultations. But probably that was just a rumor.

Thus, that hole dug through the wall in Clara’s room provided the group with several months of comfort. Friends, acquaintances, and sometimes strangers would gather in the convent to bask in the sun that filtered through the sheets of plastic that now made up the roof. Their financial problems were temporarily solved. Clara would lie in the sun, naked, on top of the altar that she refused to sell, while throughout the building people would go about their own concerns. PornoPop (the Only Remaining Go-Go Queen in Cuba) would loudly declaim the PornoPop poems that she had chosen for presentation at Fifo’s party, while Coco Salas and SuperChelo would emit operatic trills and whinnies. The Three Weird Sisters blithely knitted people’s fates. Delfín Proust would hop around and wave his arms (often covering his hands with thorns from the prickly pears that Clara had planted). Clara’s children would swim in the cistern from which everyone drank. Skunk in a Funk would be sitting on a rock writing while the Key to the Gulf would be jogging around the convent and doing exercise to maintain his graceful physique—he knew that in the next (and last) Carnival he was to be the officiant/sacrificial victim/love god in the ceremony of the Elevation of the Holy Hammer. Throughout the weeds and undergrowth, which had grown up with all the exuberance of things repressed for over four hundred years, jetéing queens would hop and skip, interrupting readings, literary compositions, recitations, and even the meditations of scholarly faggots and disgraced government officials.

The convent teemed with retired actresses, sailors weary of the sea, and teenagers who just wanted to
be there
—all sensing (or knowing) that this paradise, like all paradises, would be fleeting. Fugitive prostitutes, vagrants, deserters from obligatory military service, children abandoned by their parents, and housewives who were tired of cooking, dishwashing, and all the other tribulations occasioned by housekeeping—all sought refuge in the convent. Even the director of the national library, a woman now blind and in political disgrace, found shelter in the nave in the company of Maria las Tallo. One day they paid homage to a certain gentleman from Paris (none other than Alejo Carpentier) who had also in desperation taken refuge there, because he thought his literary identity was about to be discovered and he knew that if it was, Fifo would send him off as cultural attaché to Martinique.
J’ai toujours detesté le tropique mais une petite île tropical, c’est trop. . . .
Suddenly, among the patches of weeds there arose the tall, imposing figure of Ramón Sernada (a.k.a. the Ogress), who was searching in the convent’s garden (which he considered sacred), for the magical plant, leaf, root, or vine that would turn out to be the cure for AIDS. The Ogress, making her dolorous way through the building, would go to the altar on which Clara was sunning herself and show her a new branch or leaf. Clara would smell it and regretfully shake her head. But everyone tried to give the sick queen hope.

“The day you discover that weed, we’ll all be millionaires,” they would say. “But even if you don’t discover it, don’t worry—we’re all in the same boat, and there’s no way out for any of us. We all love life too much to live very long—and besides, what’s the use? . . . But go on over to the cistern and have a swim; that water will cure anything.”

Then Clara would signal the conversation was over by closing her eyes and lying back once more on the altar, while the soft filtered sunlight bathed her naked body.

One day, Clara emerged from her sun-bathed lethargy. She climbed up to her barbecue grill; unrolled all the canvases, tapestries, mosquito netting, linen sheets, and shawls that she had pulled through the hole or bought (with her earnings from the hole) on the black market; and started painting. Shut up in that immense nave, oblivious to everything that was happening around her, in less than a month she had created over three hundred incredible paintings. Never before had such creative energy, or genius, or explosive vitality been seen before. In five minutes she would overpaint a centuries-old canvas white, and then on that surface Clara’s hands, moving so fast they were practically invisible, would create a masterpiece.

In a matter of weeks, the convent was
filled
with masterpieces. Clara also brought down into the building all the paintings that she’d been keeping in her room, even those that she hadn’t finished yet, such as the
Portrait of Karilda Olivar Lubricious.
Aided by her friends, the entire
oeuvre
was mounted and hung as though for an exhibition; almost overnight, the convent became a gallery. Even on the high altar they erected great easels upon which reposed such inimitable masterworks as
The Color of Summer, or the New Garden of Earthly Delights,
with its thunderous explosion and collapse in the last panel of the triptych. Skunk in a Funk didn’t mind Clara’s using the name of his novel for this painting. She knew that Clara and she were a single person and that their works therefore complemented one another. . . . When the exhibit was totally installed, Clara decided to have a party to celebrate the opening of her show.