THE SCENE
BY MYLENE FERNANDEZ PINTADO
Malecén
T was sitting on the terrace when the electricity went out over the part of
the city that I can see from here. Just then I heard my mother calling me.
She is very ill. She'll die soon. I've got a calendar in the kitchen where I’ve
circled two dates. One is my mother’s death. The other is the last day to
move out of this building. I should have inverted the order, because we have
to leave the building tomorrow and my mother has two weeks to live.
When my mother was first diagnosed, everyone who cares about her
advised me to leave her at the hospital in the care of doctors and nurses in
case of an emergency. A few volunteered to sit with her. These were the
same people who insisted that I don’t love her, that I’m selfish and don’t
know anything about sacrifice. They thought I couldn’t hear them, that I'd
fallen asleep in the rocking chair I brought into my mother’s room so I can
watch her while she rests, and to be near when she needs me.
When the building was in working order, we had a woman who came to
take care of the house and a nurse who gave my mother her shots. But now
they can’t climb so many stairs. Now I give my mother her shots and do all
the grocery shopping. I've told my mother that these people don’t come
anymore because we can't afford to pay them. I don’t want to tell her that
the building barely exists anymore.
There’s no one here but us now. And since they turned off the
electricity, no one comes to visit. We live on the fourteenth floor and the
elevator doesn’t work anymore. Nor the motor that pumps water. But none
of that is important. All the water tanks on the roof are full. And there are a
lot of them, so there’s water all day long and there will be water long after
we don’t need it anymore. It’s true that the refrigerator doesn’t work, but Ibuy my mother’s drinking water already chilled at the market. 1 buy her
food there too. She only eats ham-and-cheese croissants and ice cream. Or
ate. Lately, she barely touches food; she makes a pained gesture and
abandons the plate between the sheets.
1 found out about the city’s plans for our building when I was asked to a
meeting at the office of Architecture and Urbanism near our home. It was
on the twentieth floor on Malecén Avenue, with a view of the sea. The
hallway walls were full of photos of our neighborhood in Vedado.
Sometimes I think Vedado is so scattered and rife with transients that it’s
difficult to think of it as one neighborhood, but rather many. People like to
come here, to go to Coppelia dressed in their Sunday best and spend the
entire day in line, to stroll La Rampa on the sidewalks still carved with
things by Lam and Mariano. They go to the movies and sit along the
Malecén.
The same exact photos were on the office wall too. There was one of the
seawall on the Malecén. The most curious thing was that there was no one
on the seawall in the photo. Not a single fisherman or couples kissing, not
one kid playing. There were no brave suicides portrayed, depressed poets,
drunks, street musicians, or hustlers. It must have been one of those scenes
they can create now on computers. Just erase all the people with a touch of
a button.
The other photos were busier. People strolling on La Rampa, cars on
Paseo and Avenue of the Presidents. Coppelia without lines, with satisfied
customers eating different flavors of ice cream.
Since the man I was meeting took his time, I looked at the photos and
then at the city from the balcony next to the office. There are little
homemade structures all over the rooftops, mansions turned into barracks,
houses that can barely stand. The rooftops have become dovecots. There are
fields of laundry lines; residue of homeless people; plants that grow
between the tiles on the eaves; dogs that can’t be kept inside anymore so
that instead of guarding homes, they've turned into lookouts who scan the
horizon. Sun-drenched treetops, humid and green; church steeples. Littlegray streets, a few cobblestone, which intersect, sometimes timidly, as if
hiding from the multitudes. And then the sea, always lying in wait, and the
Malecén which keeps us safe. It’s a wall of lamentation, the entrance to and
from the country of Never Again, a fixture on postcards and calendars.
Therapy for my mother.
Every time my mother could gather her strength to get up, she’d ask me
to take her out on the terrace. With the very first remittance sent by my
brother from San Francisco—once he realized that experiencing the
spectacle of my mother in the process of dying would affect his biorhythm
and would keep him from his successful life as a designer—I bought a lounge
chair, a down pillow, and a thin mattress pad, and she began to spend her
hours sitting out there. I brought her books. But later I realized she
preferred chatting. Still later, it became clear that what she wanted more
than anything was to gaze at the part of the city that was ours. One day she
said, in a whisper, that she’d never had much time to look at the sky and
that the clouds passed much too quickly.
On those afternoons, she discovered a million things. She heard the
sound of the bells from San Juan of Letrén and the songs from the day care
center nearby; the whistle of the scissors sharpener; the riot of pigeon
wings on the roof across from us. And then, as soon as the sun started
buzzing on the water, I'd take her back to her room.
We talked about the buildings around us and what they might be like
inside. We would describe those we'd actually visited and later make
ambitious plans about how we would renovate them without tearing down
the original structures.
I had time to think about all this until the man I was meeting came and
asked me into his office. Almost giddy as he spoke, he explained that our
building would be going through a major renovation, and that the current
tenants would be given new housing according to their needs. 1 explained
that we needed to stay. I told him about the situation with my mother and
that I wasn’t sure we could move her.
The man understood that my situation was delicate. But so was his. Hehad plans to complete, deadlines and tasks, expenses that had been given
the okay in order to procure resources. Everything was architecturally and
financially aligned. Emptying the building was just the first task, But he
could give me an extension. I smiled—sometimes I can be truly charming—
and thanked him. As we were saying goodbye, | felt that he wanted to say
something, maybe just the usual good wishes for recuperation, but he
seemed to think better of it and kept quiet.
That same day, I met with the doctor; I was ready to have my mother at
home until the day she died. I explained about the therapeutic qualities of
the terrace, how she delighted in the architectural view, the sea, and the
dawn. I told him I'd been born in that neighborhood, in that house, and that
my mother felt in her element there. I said nothing about the plans to
empty out the building.
The doctor was glad to hear our home was fresh and high up, with sun
and light, air and space. He was also glad it had such a good view of the
water and said that Vedado reminded him of Manhattan. I nodded so he’d
feel comfortable and I got his approval. He told me that if I made sure we
had the proper conditions, I could keep her there until she died.
I then quickly talked to him about my brother and his help. The doctor
asked if my brother had any plans to visit my mother. I lied, saying that his
papers were still not in order and that he suffered a lot because he couldn’t
come.
A few weeks after that, my neighbors began moving out of the building,
many coming by for a last goodbye. But my mother didn’t pay much
attention to them. The morphine and phenobarbital left her with just a few
lucid moments, and I took advantage of them to bring her out on the
terrace, where we would continue “renovating” Vedado. Everyone asked
when we were leaving. Everybody was very concerned about the work on
the building and how soon even the most minimal of services would be
unavailable. 1 calmed them down, saying that everything was ready, that I'd
made the pertinent arrangements with the hospital to comfortably
transport my mother using a powerful anesthetic the minute thepsychologist determined it was appropriate.
After they all left, there came a happy time, having a sixteen-story
building all to ourselves, knowing that no neighbor would stop me in the
hallways to ask me the same things: how she was this morning, how much
morphine she was taking, if she was eating, when my brother was coming,
and, poor woman, what bad luck...1 never gave an honest answer: My
mother woke up radiant every day, spent hours entertained with her 2000-
piece jigsaw puzzles (her collection of puzzles, all famous portraits, was well
known), and the morphine was just so she'd sleep quietly. The stampede out
of the building spared me the obligation of lying to them all, though r'd
never felt the slightest bit guilty about it.
The best part was the sensation that came over me when I arrived home
after getting morphine, or juice, or phenobarbital, the syringes, or
something for her cravings. I walked 17th Street in the shade of the laurel
trees and came in the entrance without worrying about the manager,
vendors, or people looking to trade housing, knowing that I had exclusive
rights to the place. There was no one murmuring behind the doors that my
brother was a jerk who thought money could solve everything, or that I
have a heart of steel and what I really wanted was for my mother to finally
die. The theories vary on this last hypothesis.
The simplest one is that I'll finally be able to go live with my brother.
The truth is that we were always very close; the two of us would play house,
and cowboys, and later we both ended up studying art and architecture. He
adored the houses designed by Le Corbusier and I was taken by the
Impressionists. Now he’s in San Francisco, sending money so I don’t need to
do anything other than care for our mother until she dies.
Another theory, which requires more neighborly shrewdness but is
actually expired, is related to the Sorbonne professor who used to visit me
because he was interested in the Cuban movie posters I had once
researched. He would come by frequently, long after he’d viewed the entire
national poster collection, finished his thesis, and curated his exhibit. Then
the real goal of his visits became sleeping together as much as possible, towhich I had no objections. Just around the time my mother got sick, he
invited me to Paris to give a series of presentations on how the French
posters of 1968 had influenced Cuba. Though I wrote out my script at first, I
ultimately answered that I could not travel because of my mother’s illness.
And I apologized, as though my mother’s death were a mere inconvenience
disrupting his magnum plans. He has never written again.
For those neighbors who don’t sign on to either of those two theories,
there's a more general option, which doesn’t really pin anything concrete
on me. According to this one, I want to be free so I can do whatever I want,
like sleep with lots of men and women; drink until I fall on my ass; smoke
marijuana and take pills and watch a lot of porno films on giant screens
with quadraphonic sound. In other words, to manifest this dark side which
my ex-neighbors insist on having seen in me since I was a little girl. They're
convinced that my mother not having left for paradise yet is the only reason
Thaven’t descended into hell.
Now that we’re without them—they’re far away, furnishing other homes
and surely missing Vedado and its excellent bus routes (on which no buses
actually pass) and its movie theaters (always without air-conditioning in the
summer) and Coppelia (with its serpentine lines) and the Malecén (which is
the only real populated part of Vedado, because it’s free)—my mother and I
are quite content.
She doesn’t know that the neighbors have moved out and so she
innocently enjoys the magical breeze that has blown away the radio and its
shrill music, the hammering at 6 in the morning, dogs barking all through
the night, fights between parents and children, brothers and sisters,
husbands and wives.
A little after the neighbors left, our phone was disconnected. 1 thought
God was on my side. In any case, I'd had it off the hook for most of the last
few weeks. That was how I had avoided giving a health report every five
minutes to the curious; the worst part was hearing their comforting words
and the sense that, behind them, there was such relief that it was my
mother and not theirs who was about to ride with Charon.When they cut the gas, I started using the two-burner hotplate we kept
for emergencies. My mother was eating less every day. So when we finally
lost our electricity too, there wasn’t much to worry about.
I fired the nurse, who cried a bit as she showed me how to give my
mother her shots, regulate the oxygen pump, take her blood pressure, and
raise the Fowler bed to the right height so my mother could get up. | also
learned to smile when I wanted to cry and to convince myself that she was
going to die anyway.
We have been very happy here, my mother and I, absolute rulers of this
beautiful building in ruins, I thought as I left the terrace to answer my
mother’s call on the last night in my neighborhood. When I went back, the
city was black. I imagined that the tourists on the cruise ship—the only line
of lights on the water—must have a very interesting view. What must it be
like to face a city completely in the dark?
When my mother called me—thank God the building’s empty or the
neighbors’ noises would have never let me hear her, especially now that her
voice is not much more than a whisper—she said she was very tired. But it
wasn’t exactly a complaint, more of a statement of fact. My mother, who
had never been the kind of Catholic who sat in church pews or wore chains
with little crucifixes, had had a priest visit just a few days before.
I had tried to make sure the priest was as young as possible, so he could
make it up all fourteen flights. 1 found one who did all his rounds on a bike,
so that the elevator not working didn’t strike him as a great obstacle.
Nonetheless, he was exhausted when he arrived and needed some time to
get himself together out on the terrace, looking at the sea and the nearby
buildings. He said it gave him a great deal of peace. I told him about my
mother, how much she enjoyed it too, and that I’d found a way for her to
have pleasant days out on those few square meters. I didn’t tell the priest
that we only had a few days before we had to move out of the building.
They spent four hours chatting. I spent the time sitting back on my
mother’s lounge chair, with her pad and her pillow, trying to see our view of
the city through her eyes. I imagined her opening her eyes in the hospital orin some other house. And then I closed my own eyes firmly to shut out this
image.
After the priest’s visit, my mother slept for forty-eight hours straight. 1
think the absence of telephone, electricity, and neighbors helped. I don’t
think it rained, or that the north wind blew, that humid breeze that
smudges the windows and gives Vedado an air of impatience and
cosmopolitanism. I think that after this dialogue with God, my mother
began preparing herself to die.
Now, with tonight’s deadline approaching, I hear her say in a weary
voice that she’s very tired. It’s midnight and she doesn’t even have the
strength to stir in bed. Anyway, there’s nothing to see outside. Nor inside
either. I'm going to find the battery-powered lamp in the kitchen so I can
look at the calendar, the one that reminds me that we must leave the
building tomorrow and that my mother still has two weeks of life.
I come back with the lamp and she’s fallen asleep, complaining through
her dreams. What must it be like to never get relief, even from sedatives? Or
to close your eyes and not open them again? Or to spend your last days in a
strange place?
I start to fix the syringe. I do it very slowly, and it’s not because I’m
clumsy; I’ve actually gotten quite agile with this business of giving shots. I
review all the decisions I've made in the last few days. After my mother
passes, | will not go to San Francisco; there’s nothing for me there. It’s
possible my presence would disrupt my brother’s biorhythm and inhibit his
successful life as a designer.
Nor will I go to Paris to look for the poster man. A person who's
incapable of writing two lines to ask about my sick mother is not anyone I
can trust. In any case, I've got my presentation written. It doesn’t matter to
me if it gets published. It felt good to write it. It was like old times, as if my
brother and mother were out on the terrace with me, with our toy soldiers,
dolls, or jigsaw puzzles, depending on the day.
Now I hold the syringe in my right hand. I make sure the needle can spit
out the first few drops, which indicate all is well, and 1 make my way to thebedroom. I don’t need the lamp. I’ve gotten to know my mother’s body well
in these dark but blissful days. | should move out of the building tomorrow.
With my free hand, I go to the calendar and mark off my mother’s dying
day. And then I go to her.
Translation by Achy Obejas