Authors: Pablo Medina
He avoided thinking about the past and for the most part he was successful. Whenever the memory of his knifing came up, he stood and walked around the block looking at garden fixtures, the clouds, the trees, anything to divert his mind. New Orleans was a nice town, slow and gentle on the nerves. The past was a gray indeterminate mass that had no surface because it had no bottom. If he was going to die anywhere it would be here, a place he liked better, or remembered better, than any other. Days came and days went, interrupted by students, shy younger ones accompanied by their mothers and cocky older ones on their own. Without knowing it, Adalberto had become a fixture like a church or a barbershop. El maestro. That pleased him most of all.
All ambition left him. He didn't care if he was the best teacher in town or the worst, the richest or the poorest. Some men liked to collect women, and some men liked to eat and drink well, but he was not driven in those directions. People knew him, took him for granted even, and he didn't mind that, nor did he mind that slowly, imperceptibly, those people died and younger ones took their place who didn't recognize him on the street and therefore were not compelled to engage him in conversation, chat about the weather or the house falling down at the corner or the runaway dog that had bitten one of the children on the next block. Then one day when he was shaving, he looked at himself in the mirror and saw a man, older-looking than his years, but glowing with contentment, who went to bed at night and got up in the morning because he couldn't imagine doing anything else. He had no wife to care for, no children to feed. His students' faces, and those of their mothers, were as blank and indistinguishable as he was to them. El maestro. That he'd once had a past and that the future was coming at him faster than he could figure didn't matter. At a moment's notice he could be gone and forgotten, less than a blip in people's memory, replaced by a younger, more dynamic teacher who would know the latest techniques, the newest sounds.
What's the hottest music? one of his students repeated, incredulous, when Adalberto asked. Jazz, man, jazz.
Jazz, Adalberto said. That's not new.
The way Jelly Roll plays it, nobody's ever done before. The left hand does crazy things, improvises on the rhythm so the piano sounds like a drum.
As it should, Adalberto said. Piano's a percussion instrument.
But the rhythm's not regular. It varies and the melody moves off the rhythm.
The clave beat from the habanera. Cubans been doing that for a while, moving off the six/eight on the downbeat, then back again.
Jelly Roll calls it Spanish tinge.
My ass, Adalberto said with a smirk. It ain't Spanish. It's Cuban.
Spanish, Cuban, what's the difference? the young man said. He was barely out of his teens, thought he was Columbus discovering the world.
Look at me, buster. You think they have people with my color skin in Spain?
You could be Creole, the young man said.
I am criollo, bobera. I got African blood and I got Spanish. I'm Cuban and so's those rhythms. He heard them from me first. I was playing at the St. George with a band full of nobodies and Jelly Roll comes in a few times. Then he disappears. Goes up north to Chicago, L.A. Now's he's calling it the Spanish tinge and I'm still a nobody without lungs.
Adalberto sent the young musician away without a lesson and thought maybe he'd reached the end of his teaching. Jelly Roll was out there in the world making music, and a new generation was gaining on him strong. Music was changing and he didn't know what it was changing into. He stepped out to the store to buy himself some cigarettes, mull the thing over. On his way he walked past a blooming magnolia under which lay an old bicycle. The bicycle, rusted and mangled, was covered with petals fallen from the tree. There now, that's a good way to go, broken, covered with flowers. And this thought was followed almost immediately by the fact that he was only forty. Strange to think his life was over. There's any number of things he could do. He could be a bartender or a club manager; he could open up a music store or become a housepainter. Lots of houses in New Orleans needed paint.
Involved in these thoughts, he opened the door to the store, and just as he entered a gust of wind hit him square on the face. It was a sweet-smelling kind of wind, perfumed with gardenias and moist, as if it had come off the ocean. It had none of that grocery-store smellâstale carton and pickles and salt bacon all mixed together. Jackson, the owner, sat behind the counter chewing on a toothpick and drinking out of a coffee cup. The store was as Adalberto had always known itâseveral rows of canned goods and, up along the far wall, sacks of rice and dry beans of various kinds. Something, though, was different, and not just the smell. He nodded to Jackson and Jackson nodded back and asked what he wanted. Adalberto didn't answer.
Instead he walked the length of the establishment, looking down each row until he reached the last, which he followed to the end with the line of his sight. There she was, leaning over a sack, shoveling red beans into a paper bag. He had a strong desire to call her name, but every time he tried, no sound came out of his mouth. He felt nauseated and tasted the bitter bile from long ago in his mouth, the knife going into him, the pain, the deflation. There she was, China, and he couldn't even say her name. He heard a voice urging him to go to her and another telling him to stay away. A powerful struggle went on inside him between what he'd wanted and what he'd lost, the forces of ambition and love and the forces of defeat. The store tilted and he almost fell over sideways to the wooden floor, but he grabbed hold of a post and leaned against it, taking deep breaths until the world was level again.
He made his decision, which was based neither on reason nor on passion but on a reluctance to give up any more of his life than he had. He retraced his steps back to the front of the store and slipped out the door. It was spring and the sun was out and trees were blooming all over the neighborhood. He walked home without the cigarettes, taking his time, past the broken bicycle and the magnolia tree, past the old houses and the ones just recently built. He didn't know what year it wasâ1928, 1938? He sat on the porch a long while, not moving much. No one came in or out, not his fellow tenants or his landlady or the postman. The birds had flown away looking for food in another yard. He was stuck, somewhere between the living and the dead, the soft afternoon sun making everything creamy. It was a great day to be alive, someone might have said a block or two away. He sat until the shadows lengthened and the day turned to night and the night into an open space that could only be measured by the depth and breadth of all he was and ever would be.
STORYTELLER
I
had just finished bathing Papa and was applying liniment on his chest when he said something very soft, which sounded like radio static. As I bent over and asked him to repeat it, he arched his back, let out a long moan, and didn't take another breath. I sat on the bed, unsure what to do, call the police, an ambulance, a priest? What would they say about Mama, mummified next to him? Why hadn't I called after she died? There are laws, you know. What story could I possibly tell? She tried to kill me.
A flock of creatures swept through the bedroom window. They flew around me in tight swooping turns, grazing my face with their wings and pecking at my ears. At first I thought they were demons coming to fetch Papa's soul. They were smaller than I imagined, and from them emanated a sweet odor of tenderness and severity, not the stench of sulfur. They weren't demons but angels come to take him to a different place. The peace they had experienced through eternity made them impervious to any kind of human suffering. All I could feel was the relief of someone liberated at last from the chains of obligation. Everything's a story, I tell you.
Angels on the dresser, cooing and pecking the warped wood; angels on the bed, ministering to Papa with divine ablutions, chanting in all the languages that have ever existed, as well as a few that had not yet been created. I stood away, arms over my head, until they were finished with their rites and had flown back to their perches. I made my way toward Papa and felt for his body, which had acquired the texture of melted cheese. It was too soon for decomposition and I couldn't figure out what they had done to him, what interstellar acids they had bathed him in. I lowered my hand to his belly again, gathered some of the curdly substance, and brought it to my nose. It was like nothing I'd smelled before, seawater and milk and roasted poppy seeds and toilet-tank water. My mind went in circles around the smell, trying to identify it. I stuck out my tongue and tasted, and I knew it was bird shit Papa was covered in, not angelic fluids. I screamed at the angels; I swatted at them as they flew by inside the room, beating the air with their wings, cooing maniacally. They bounced against the walls and ceiling until they found the window and flew out flapping, leaving behind a faint avian scent and a rain of downy feathers that stuck to my head and arms and gathered on the floor.
I cried a long while. I'd never felt such desolation. I was smeared in shit and feathers. I was blind. I knew nothing of the world outside the door, how to make my way into it, how to survive within it, and I had no one to pity me but myself. Some liberation.
Then the trumpet sounded outside, the one I heard when Mama died, playing a tune as softly as a horn can play. I lay by the bed listening, a cool breeze accompanying the music, bringing the promise of warm weather. It was a song called “Ausencia,” Mama's favorite, which she sang to me on a day when she was breathing well enough to feel nostalgic. It told of birds returning to the nest and of other birds who love and leave and never come back. I'd had enough of birds. You know how song lyrics are. They never make sense when you need them to. I left the bedroom. I heard the click of the bedroom door behind me and I walked quietly away. In the living room the horn was muffled, almost inaudible. I couldn't stay in the apartment. The world had many doors to pass through.
In the lobby I heard the super calling after me, asking if there was anything he could get me. I knew where I was going. On the street I could hear the music clearly again. I followed the tune as if I were reeling in the big fish, the one I'd so wanted to catch all the time by the river, pole in hand, head in the clouds, eyes on the waters of my imagining. I went down the street to the corner and waited for someone to help me cross. Cars swished by me and trucks with their murderous engines. There were sirens and horns, drunks and derelicts, men and women passing by, invisible, unknowable. A taxi stopped, thinking I needed a ride. Beyond the river of traffic was the horn player, blaring out his tune. I sensed someone next to me waiting for the light to change. I was afraid to ask for help, thinking I'd be discovered, rebuffed, sent back where I belonged. I fought myself hard, as one fights the counteraction of a fish trying to throw the hook.
Could you tell me when the light is green? I asked, sounding timid and slow minded, the king's English lurking just under each word.
Wassat? he said in Cubop City speech, no breath wasted.
I'm blind, I said.
Where's your stick?
I don't have one.
Light's green, the man said.
I expected him to grab my arm and help me across but he was already gone. I put my arms out and stepped off the curb, following the taut line of sound. I must have appeared like a sleepwalker or a zombie to the drivers. I could feel the heat of their motors, the glow of their metal. When I reached the other side of the street, I tripped on the curb and fell against a newspaper box. I lay on the sidewalk struggling
to get up as people walked past me. I could hear them chattering, their soles slapping the sidewalk. I took a deep breath and got myself up with the aid of the box and kept going, still with arms outstretched until I was right in front of the music man.
Hey, music man, where are you from? I thought nothing of asking.
The playing stopped. I was at the edge of the world, about to fall off.
I'm Rican. What of it?
At that moment I knew I'd caught the big fish, the one I hoped to bring my parents in their sickness. There was no way I was going back to the apartment now.
You were playing my mother's favorite song.
Oh yea? She a romantic woman?
She's dead.
Sorry about that, Papo. We all gotta go sometime. Listen, I'm wondering if you could help me out and count the money that's in the case, you know? I'm blind and I can't see if I got five cents or fifty dollars in there.
I was about to move toward the music man and I let out a laugh. It was more like a whinny.
Whoa there, he said. What's so funny?
I'm blind, too, I said.
That's a coincidence, the music man said.
Well, almost. I can see a little. I have to get very close to see what's in your case.
Do it. We might have enough in there for a couple of beers.
I did as I was told. Anywhere else people would be wondering what that man was doing looking into the blind man's horn case. Stealing his money? Hey you, get away from that poor blind man. Might even throw a karate kick in my direction. But here in Cubop City? I could be strangling the blind man and no one would care. Blow that horn and let it happen. Nothing personal.
Nineteen dollars and seventy-three cents.
That'll buy us a few.
The music man packed his horn. He got his stick and stood. He told me to grab his arm and I did.
Hey, Papo, he said, you smell terrible. Where you been?
Hiding, I said.
I got a shower in my place. My woman's blind, too, but she can smell a rat's asshole a mile away. Vente, Papo. We'll clean you up.
I didn't respond but let the Puerto Rican lead me to the subway entrance at the corner. We stood at the top of the stairs a moment, grabbed the handrail, and descended into the underworld.