Pig's Foot: A Novel Part 18

At this, I leapt to my feet angrily and shouted that I hadn't murdered anyone.

'Don't upset yourself,' Clemente said again, never losing his composure. 'Your case is more intriguing than I first thought.'

'Intriguing in what way?' I said, not understanding what he meant.

'Let's say, for example, that I tell you I am not the leader of the Ku Klux Klan, but am actually the head of the Department of Psychiatry in this hospital, and that is the reason why my staff wear white coats. What would you say?'

'I'd say you were wasting your time because I don't need my head shrunk.'

'In that case,' said the commissioner, 'what might you think if I were to tell you that the place you describe as Pata de Puerco, the field with the chalk line where you arrived three days ago, is in fact a baseball pitch in the grounds of the hospital; that there is no one here called Atanasio, or Palmito, or Luc.u.mi, and no one named Nicotina. What would you say if I were to tell you that Pablo, the man you killed with a machete, was an elderly patient who, far from being a muscular Indian warrior, was as weak and scrawny as Juan Primito, that the man you call Reverend Carlos is a paranoid schizophrenic and the boy you refer to as Ivan Nicotina is actually called Ivan Cortina who suffers from agoraphobia? If I were to tell you all this, what would you say?'

'I'd say you were accusing me of making the whole thing up . . . But it's true Pablo was one of the Nicotinas, and everyone agreed that he had to be stopped once and for all.'

'When you say "everyone",' said Clemente, 'you are referring to voices in your head. There were only three people on the baseball pitch you call Pata de Puerco. You, the dead man and me.'

'All the people I told you about were there: Reverend Carlos, Palmito, Luc.u.mi, Alberto the wije, everyone. Stop trying to screw with my head, I'm getting out of here,' I screamed, unable to bear so much insolence.

'I'm sorry,' Clemente said, 'I really must ask you to calm down, otherwise I will have no choice but to resort to other measures. I have a different version of events, and I would be grateful if you would hear me out. It is a confession, if you like, one that I would like to tell to you and you alone.'

I stared at the peeling wall, spotting the c.o.c.kroach I had noticed earlier, but I was so hungry now I could no longer tell what colour it was. And so I promised to stay very quiet while the man with the Pancho Villa moustache began . . .

The Crazy and the Sane.

'First, let me start by saying that your real name is not Oscar Mandinga,' said Clemente. 'Your name is Ulises Correa Iglesias and you were born in a district called Pedrito Blanco in Santiago de Cuba. But you were right in thinking you are an only child. From an early age, you were responsible for looking after your mother Elena; you never knew your father, and had little contact with other members of your family. You have vague, fond memories of your uncle Emilio not Emilio Bacardi, of course, but Emilio Correa Rivero who worked in a cardboard factory near El Cobre. He was the one who instilled in you a love of literature, the one who first encouraged you to write because he recognised you had a talent. You loved the countryside as a boy, and you had a happy childhood despite the fact that your family was poor. But you grew up to be a solitary child, reserved, an underachiever. It took much coaxing on your uncle's part to bring you out of your sh.e.l.l . . .

'Emilio Correa Rivero never tired of telling you that, if there is something you don't know, the best remedy is to learn. He encouraged you to read whatever you could lay your hands on, to note down your thoughts and impressions of everything you read. You read magazines, my friend Ulises, you read newspapers and back issues of gazettes that the young men from garbage trucks tossed on to the local rubbish tip. You read the few books you could find at home: a battered Bible and a copy of Jose Marti's Simple Verses. Sometimes you read history and geography textbooks, sometimes horror stories everything, in fact, that divine providence put within your reach. And you learned something from everything you read; sometimes very little, but something always remained with you, like a green leaf in a mountain of garbage or to polish the metaphor a book abandoned on a rubbish tip.

'All this I learned from Augusto, a neighbour who watched you grow up. He did not run a laundry like the Augusto in your story, he was an animal trader, goats mostly, though occasionally he would buy or sell cattle on the sly. Augusto told me you are a fine young man whose ill luck it was to inherit the misfortune of Elena Elena, as I said, was your mother's name, and not the girlfriend you mentioned in your story. You also inherited the ambition of your uncle Emilio, a man who was as stubborn as one of Augusto's goats, and had a vicious temper. Your uncle would never take advice, nor listen to friends and neighbours who suggested that you should be out playing with other boys rather than having your nose constantly buried in a book.

'On one occasion, a friend of Augusto's, an old man known as El Mozambique who ran errands for neighbours for ten pesos and who was much loved in the area, suggested to Emilio that you were starved of affection and suggested he take you to the park to play with your little friends and soak up the human warmth you sorely lacked. Emilio lashed out and punched him, El Mozambique dragged him into the street where the brawl continued. As a result of the fight, both men spent a month in jail and you never spoke to El Mozambique again, so it's understandable that you should make him the villain of your story. It also explains the paternal relationship between Emilio Bacardi and Melecio, the character with whom you obviously identify.

'Augusto suggested I speak to Juanita, a neighbour who lived opposite your house. Juanita is not a santera or a wise-woman, though she does sell medicinal herbs rosemary, rose periwinkle, mango bark extract and potions made from ca.s.sava and other roots. As a girl, she washed floors in a local polyclinic and physically she resembles your description, so I have no doubt that she was the inspiration for the wise-woman in your story, the neighbourhood healer. After all their professions are not so dissimilar.

'Juanita said that despite your falling out with El Mozambique, you were still the same gentle, intelligent boy you had always been. But all this changed after your trip to Havana. By this time your literary talent had been widely recognised, you had already won the Santiago Prize for Literature and later the even more prestigious Cucalambe Compet.i.tion, which included writers from all the provinces in eastern Cuba.

'You went everywhere with a pencil and a notepad, setting down your observations, reciting magnificent poems which came to you with astonishing spontaneity. Very soon, your fame reached the loftiest intellectual circles in Oriente. The Natural Bohemian, they called you, for your ability to recite poems that occurred to you on the spur of the moment and so, gradually, your fame spread until the glory you had attained in your own province was not enough. It was then that you decided to partic.i.p.ate in the National Prize for Literature, awarded by the Casa de las Americas in Havana, submitting your latest and most ambitious work a novel in two parts that had taken you almost three years to write. A telegram arrived and, with trembling hands, you read it to discover that your novel had made the final shortlist. Two days later, you caught the first train you could and headed for Havana.

'"Something happened on that trip," Juanita told me as she pulled on her cigarette b.u.t.t. Something that you would not talk about to anyone, not even your mother Elena. When people asked about the trip, you simply mentioned a neighbourhood called Lawton and claimed to be disappointed that you had come third in some literary compet.i.tion.

'According to Juanita, Benicio and Gertrudis are not related to you, they are certainly not your real grandparents. They are an elderly couple as old as the Sierra Maestra, as she put it whom everyone in El Cobre refers to as "The Grandparents". Benicio and Gertrudis were always fond of you, and you regularly went to visit them, especially if you were very upset. When I asked Juanita whether I should speak to them, she told me not to bother, explaining they are both in San Juan de Dios nursing home now, having gone a little soft in the head after the death of their dog Facundo. The only person who might be able to tell me more, Juanita said, was Malena, the daughter of a local butcher, a short, bald, decent man known to everyone as El Judio.

'El Judio said that you and Malena had been friends since primary school, but had gone to different secondary schools. Even so, you remained close since you were both obsessed with books and both spent much of your time writing poems and stories. But like everyone else I spoke to, he knew no one named Mandinga or Kortico, and had never heard of a village called Pata de Puerco.

'Malena told me that you had confided in her that during your trip to Havana you had fallen in love with a young woman you met at the Casa de las Americas where the literary compet.i.tion was being held. Her name was Ester though obviously she was not a midwife. She was twenty-six with pale skin and dark eyes, she came from Camaguey and, like you, had never been to Havana before. You fell in love with her at first sight, but Ester thought of you only as a friend and a talented writer. You did everything you could to win her round, penning poems for her, yet still Ester insisted she had no time for love.

'In the end, however, your persistence paid off and you persuaded Ester to go to the cinema with you. The following Sunday, you took her to a shopping centre in downtown Havana where bands played. Later still you took her to your favourite place in Havana, the Plaza Roja on the Calzada del Diez de Octubre near Lawton where there was a flame tree like the one you used to sit under in your garden in Santiago; hence the central role Lawton plays in your story.

'In a derelict laundry on the Calle Linea you kissed Ester for the first time and it was in that same laundry you yourself described in your story that Ester eventually told you that she loved you. There was something in her voice that did not convince you, but when you opened your eyes and saw the real world, you managed to stop trembling and decided that it did not matter if things continued as they were.

'Two days later, the results of the literary prize were announced: Ignacio el Jabao won for his novel Destarre, Anastasia Aquelarre came second with her novel Musica de Feria and Ulises Correa Iglesias you came third for a novel ent.i.tled Pata de Puerco. You seemed entirely happy with the outcome, and during the celebrations that night you went looking for Ester to give her a new poem you had written. You could not find her. Someone told you they had seen her earlier heading down towards the Malecon. Ten minutes later, as you were walking back to your hostel, you saw Ester kissing Ignacio el Jabao in the dark doorway of the laundry where you had first learned to kiss. You stood frozen, contemplating the painful scene, and in that moment decided to kill them not in a hail of bullets, as with Augusto and El Judio in your story, but with silence and undying hatred. I imagine this is why in your story you depict Ester as a grotesque, undesirable, obese character, why the characters Ester and Ignacio el Jabao represent the ugly face of betrayal, it also explains your connection to the laundry.

'Malena told me you came back from Havana a changed man, quieter and more reserved than ever. You took refuge in your books. You carried on writing. You hardly set foot outside the house, and barely spoke to anyone, even Malena and when you did see her, she told me she found your att.i.tude unbearable. You told her that women were sp.a.w.n of the devil, that you would never fall in love again.

'Then, a few short weeks ago, your uncle Emilio Correa Rivero died suddenly of a heart attack, and hardly had you grieved for him when, by a strange coincidence, your mother Elena also died. It was at this point that books became your only reality and the more you read, the more you obliterated reality from your mind. In a heartbeat, my friend Ulises, your whole world had fallen apart, as dreams fall apart when disillusion sets in.

'When you began your story, you told me that "it is impossible to imagine the man you will become when you find yourself alone" and you were right. At the tender age of twenty-three, you found yourself utterly alone. I know this to be true. Just as I know that you did once strangle a cat, that you twice attempted suicide after your first schizophrenic episode, first by hanging yourself and then by taking twenty haloperidol tablets. In the end, no one can escape death. No one. But it is possible in life to outwit death and, more importantly, to rescue those whose time has not yet come. You followed the course of your short, frustrated life until you came to the events that occurred a week ago when, sadly, you killed Pablo, a patient at the hospital, with a machete.

'You present as a paranoid schizophrenic, my friend Ulises Correa Iglesias. You suffer from psychosis, hallucinations, delusions, disorganised thinking. You need help now, before it's too late.' This was the diagnosis of Commissioner Clemente, told to me after he had subjected me to a tissue of lies that left me open-mouthed and gasping for breath.

When I could eventually speak I spewed a torrent of abuse and hurled myself at him. Everything happened in the blink of an eye. Clemente roared for help and two whiteshirts so huge they looked like gorillas immediately appeared, grabbed me by the arms and dragged me down the corridor past old men in tatters mumbling to themselves and people staring at the walls and laughing. They took me into a cell and there they strapped me to a gurney. I went on cursing and swearing and screaming for help as they stuck electrodes to my temples and stuffed a wad of cotton in my mouth. It was then that the lights went out and my head was split in two; it was then that Commissioner Clemente took away the sun for ever.

When I woke up, I once again saw the face of Clemente. He asked if I was feeling better, if I had had something to eat. I didn't know where I was, who I was, what day it was. I had a pounding headache and the room reeked of s.h.i.t and vomit. 'Don't you remember me, Senor Mandinga?' said the bald man and I told him I didn't remember him and asked why he was calling me Mandinga.

'Because that's the name you gave me when you introduced yourself,' said Clemente. Then he said that it was normal that I couldn't remember anything and that I should be happy because that meant I had come back to reality. Then the questions started again: he wanted to know my age, my parents' names, where I had been born and whether there ever existed a place named Pata de Puerco.

'Of course there was a place called Pata de Puerco.'

'Ah, I see. Are you sure you're not referring to a novel that you wrote?'

'I'm sure.'

'And the name Ulises Correa means nothing to you?'

'Of course it means something to me.'

And this was the truth. From the moment I came round, I heard a cacophony of voices, shrieking voices that would not even let me think. Yet even in this world of confusion I recognised the voice of Ulises, just as I recognised the voices of Judio Aleman and Judio the butcher; I could clearly see the faces of Mozambique the murderer and Mozambique the old beggar in El Cobre; my real home, I knew, was in Lawton, though sometimes I was not even sure of this, because I saw faces I had never seen before, faces I might have seen once in a dream. The truth is, I no longer knew who I was.

'Let me tell you something, Commissioner Clemente. There is only one reality: the reality that makes sense inside our heads. In there, if you don't understand something, you ask questions and you keep an open mind since the answers often lead us to places we don't want to go. If your lack of experience means you cannot see that places like Pata de Puerco exist, that they're real, there's really no point in us continuing this conversation. If I am crazy, you are crazier still for dragging me back to this reality we live in, since the world we call real is the craziest of all. The sane are the real madmen, and the madmen are the sane, Senor Clemente.'

This I said to the Imperial Wizard of the Cuban branch of the Ku Klux Klan. Then I suggested he turn on the television so he could see whether what I had just said was true. Clemente stared at me with black eyes like bottomless wells and scrawled something in his red notebook. Only the howls of pain from who knows where reminded me where I was. A cracked voice rumbled inside me and then exploded like a grenade. It was the voice of Clemente ordering that I be given more electroshock. The gorillas stepped back into the room and reattached the electrodes. In the days that followed there were more shocks, more and more of them. Until one day I no longer even knew whether I existed or whether, as Clemente said, I was just another character, a figment of my own imagination.

Since then, I amuse myself in this dark cell telling stories to my faithful friends: the four walls, the roaches and the rats. What else is there to do? There are times when I feel certain that night has fallen, my mind stirs and I consider myself a prophet. But after a few seconds I fall back into this dark chasm of not knowing who I am. The images in my head are blurred and confused, as though with every hundred metres the world shifts and changes, and that's when the tremors start, the terrible earthquake that shakes the ground beneath my feet that will not let me live.

Sometimes, after the crisis has pa.s.sed, I sit here quietly. I escape from my cell and soar high above everything, up to the peaks of the Sierra, from where I see dragonflies, the vast green expanse of the meadows and the rice fields. I am one of Evaristo's kites, floating in the sheltering blue sky. Down below everyone is gathered round the red flame tree waiting for me, ready to begin the festivities, to recite poems: Melecio with Maria, Jose and his friend Oscar and their wives Betina and Malena, Juanita the wise-woman with her Angolan orchids, El Judio, Kid Chocolate, the wijes, El Mozambique and Ester. In these brief moments, I am happy. Until I open my eyes again and find myself still strapped to this bed, in this darkness that smells of dog p.i.s.s and death and despair. I hope that one day I will be able to find absolute silence, but the voices in my head never leave me, nor does the darkness.

You have to believe me when I say that it is not pessimism I wanted to convey in telling you my story. I wanted to take you back to the roots of a man and the story that created him. If this is an act of a madman, then I am proud to accept the name. I don't want to be said, like those white-shirted henchmen, to be unable to see beyond the universe that man himself has created. Leave me to be mad like the artists and the poets. Mad like Nature herself. Like those same people, those same G.o.ds who invented love. Having said that, and with great regret, I won't deny that I have seriously considered swallowing a clock. That's the truth. Other times I think about swallowing a fistful of nails, or maybe one of these days I'll simply hang myself. But not today. Today you have given me your time, lent me your ears and for that I am extremely grateful.

So for the moment, those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds will have to kill me with electroshocks because I won't give them the satisfaction of killing myself. But before that happens, I want to thank you for having kept me company all this time. Thank you for listening to this story of a small corner of a sweeping plain with a few scattered shacks between the Sierra Maestra mountains of Santiago de Cuba and the copper mines of El Cobre, where the breeze blows and night enfolds us with its chill breath and the purple cloak that curls about the streets. Thank you for walking with me along the dirt roads of Pata de Puerco, this village of mud, fictional or real. This forgotten place where some day I will return for ever. My name is Oscar Mandinga. Don't forget it.

Acknowledgements.

I would like to thank a number of people for their invaluable contributions to the creation of this book: Jose Adrian Vitier, Nick Caistor, Rupert Rohan, Olga Marta, Marina Asenjo, Elizabeth Woabank, Greg Heinimann, Laura Brooke and all the members of my family at Bloomsbury. I would particularly like to thank Felicity Bryan and Bill Swainson who, from the start, have had faith in me, and also Frank Wynne for his magnificent translation and for the crucial contribution he has made to the final version of the text.

A Note on the Author.

Carlos Acosta was born in Havana in 1973 and trained at the National Ballet School of Cuba. He has been a princ.i.p.al at the English National Ballet, the Houston Ballet, the American Ballet Theatre and the Royal Ballet, and has danced as a guest artist all over the world, winning numerous international awards. He is the author of the autobiography No Way Home: A Cuban Dancer's Story and made his film debut in New York, I Love You.

www.carlosacosta.com.

A Note on the Translator.

Frank Wynne has won four major prizes for his translations, including the 2002 IMPAC for Atomised by Michel Houellebecq, the 2005 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and the 2008 Scott Moncrieff Prize. He is also the translator of Tomas Eloy Martinez's Purgatory and won the 2012 Premio Valle Inclan prize for his translation of Marcelo Figueras's Kamchatka.

www.frankwynne.com.

BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

No Way Home: A Cuban Dancer's Story.

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