TODAY’S GAY WISDOM
An Excerpt from Jaime Manrique’s Eminent Maricones
“A Sadness As Deep As the Sea”
The last days of the Cuban-born Reinaldo Arenas ("Before Night Falls")
Reinaldo lived on 44th Street between 8th and 9th Avenues. He had
visited my apartment many times yet had never invited me into his home.
So when Thomas Colchie phoned in December 1990 and asked me to check on
Reinaldo, I thought I'd better get in touch with him right away. Too
many friends had died before we had a chance to say things we wanted to
say. I called him, and we made plans for me to stop by late that
afternoon. I climbed the steps of Reinaldo's building and rang his
buzzer. The building was a walk-up, and Reinaldo's apartment was on the
top floor, the sixth.
At the top of the steep stairs I knocked on his door. I heard what
sounded like a long fumbling with locks and chains, which even in Times
Square seemed excessive. The door opened, and I almost gasped.
Reinaldo's attractive features were hideously deformed: half his face
looked swollen, purple, almost charred, as if it were about to fall off.
He was in pajamas and slippers. I can't remember whether we shook hands
or not or what we said at that moment. All I remember is that, once I
was inside the apartment, he started putting on the chains and locks, as
if he were afraid someone was going to break down the door.
We went through the kitchen into a small living room. Besides an
old-fashioned sound system and a television set, I remember a primitive
painting of the Cuban countryside. A table, two chairs, and a worn-out
sofa completed the decor. Reinaldo sat on the sofa and I took a chair. I
felt that if I sat too close to him, I would not be able to look him in
the eye. Stacks of manuscripts lay on the table--thousands and
thousands of sheets, and Reinaldo seemed like a shipwreck disappearing
in a sea of paper.
When I asked if they were copies of a manuscript he had just finished,
he informed me that the three manuscripts on the table were a novel, a
book of poems, and his autobiography, Before Night Falls. Reinaldo spoke
with enormous difficulty, his voice a frail rasp. "The novel, El color del verano, concludes my Pentagony. It's an irreverent book that makes fun of everything," he mused.
"Leprosorio is a volume of poems. And Antes que anochezca,"
he pointed to the third pile, "is my autobiography. I dictated it into a
tape recorder and an amanuensis transcribed it. It's going to make a
lot of people mad.
It seemed to me absolutely protean the amount of writing he had managed
to do, considering what a debilitating disease AIDS is. I said so.
"Writing those books kept me alive," he whispered. "Especially the
autobiography. I didn't want to die until I had put the final touches.
It's my revenge." He explained, "I have a sarcoma in my throat. It makes
it hard for me to swallow solid foods or to speak. It's very painful."
"Then maybe you shouldn't talk. I'll do the talking," I offered, moving
to the sofa.
"But I want to talk," he said curtly. "I need to talk." I said,
"Reinaldo, if there is anything you need, please don't hesitate to let
me know. Whatever it is...cooking your meals, getting your medicines,
going with you to the doctor, anything." I mentioned the the PEN
American Center had a fund for writers and editors with AIDS and offered
to contact them. "Thanks so much, cariño," he said in the plaintive
singsong in which he spoke. It was a sweet, caressing tone: melodious
like a lazy samba but also mournful, weary, accepting of the hardships
of life. This was a typically peasant trait. "There is a woman who comes
to help three days a week. She does all my errands. Besides, Lazaro
[Lazaro Carriles, his ex-lover who had remained his closest friend]
comes by every day."
Just in case he wasn't aware, I mentioned other sources where he could
go for help. He snapped, "I don't like those men who serve as volunteer.
I can't stand all that humility." From where I sat I could see a
bleached wintry sunset over the Hudson. "But if you contact the PEN Club
that would be good," he conceded. "I would like to get away from here
before winter comes. My dream is to go to Puerto Rico and get a place at
the beach so I can die by the sea." To encourage him, I said, "Perhaps
your health will improve. People sometimes..."
"Jaime," he cut me off, "I want to die. I don't want my health to
improve...and then deteriorate again. I've been through too many
hospitalizations already. After I was diagnosed with PCP [AIDS
pneumonia], I asked Saint Virgilio Piñera," he said, referring to the
deceased homosexual Cuban writer, " to give me three years to live so
that I could complete my body of work." Reinaldo smiled, and his
monstrous face showed some of his former handsomeness.
"Saint Virilio granted me my request. I'm happy. I do wish, though,
that I had lived to see Fidel kicked out of Cuba, but I guess it won't
happen during my lifetime. Soon, I hope, his tyranny will end. I feel
certain of that." I knew better than to disagree with him when it came
to discussing Fidel Castro. Once, in the mid-eighties, I had tried to
tell him to put behind him his years of imprisonment and persecution, to
forget Cuba, to accept this county as his new home and to live in the
present.
"You just don't understand, do you?" he had shouted, shaking with
anger. "I feel like one of those Jews who were branded with a number by
the Nazis; like a concentration camp survivor. There is no way on earth I
can forget what I went through. It's my duty to remember. This," he
roared, hitting his chest, "will not be over until Castro is dead. Or I
am dead." We talked for a while about the collapse of the communist
states.
The last thing I wanted was to upset him in any way, yet I had to
defend my belief in socialism as the most humanistic form of government.
So I spoke to that effect. "On paper socialism is the ideal form of
government," he said, not altogether surprising me. "It's just that it's
never worked anywhere. Perhaps some day." Becoming thoughtful, almost
as if talking to himself, he added, "Jaime, what a life I've had. Even
before the revolution, it was bad enough the agony of being an
intellectual queen in Cuba. What a sad an hypocritical world that was,"
he paused.
"Finally, I leave that hell, and come here full of hopes. And this
turns out to be another hell; the worship of money is as bad as the
worst in Cuba. All these years, I've felt Manhattan was just another
island-jail. A bigger jail with more distractions but a jail
nonetheless. It just goes to show that there are more than two hells. I
left one kind of hell behind and fell into another kind. I never thought
I would live to see us plunge again into the dark ages. This plague --
AIDS -- is but a symptom of the sickness of our age."
As night fell, the neon of the billboards of midtown Manhattan and the
lights of the skyscrapers provided the only illumination. We chatted in
hushed tones, more intimately than we ever had before. I was aware of
how precious the moment was to me, how I wanted to engrave it forever in
my memory. When I got up to leave, Reinaldo had difficulty finding his
slippers in the darkness, so I knelt on the floor and put them on his
calloused, swollen, plum-colored feet. We went again through the
kitchen, where he mentioned he would have broiled fish for dinner. Then
he unchained the numerous locks, slowly, one by one.
We didn't hug or shake hands as we parted -- as if neither of those
gestures was appropriate. "Call me any time, if you need anything," I
said. "You're such a dear," he said. As I was about to take the first
step down, I turned around. The door to the apartment was still open. In
the rectangular darkness Reinaldo's shadowy shape was like a ghost who
couldn't make up its mind whether to materialize or to vanish.
The following day Reinaldo called to ask me if I could get him some
grass. He said he had heard it helped to control nausea after meals. I
told him that I would try to get some. I called a couple of friends and
mentioned Reinaldo's request. Bill Sullivan suggested that I contact the
Gay Men's Health Crisis because he thought Reinaldo sounded suicidal. I
dismissed this possibility. Because his wish was to die by the sea, I
thought he would try to make it to Puerto Rico if he received the grant
from PEN.
The next day, around noon, Tom Colchie called to say the Reinaldo had
taken his life the night before; that he had used pills and had washed
them down with shots of Chivas Regal; that he had left letters -- one of
them for the police, clarifying the circumstances of his death -- and
another one for the Cuban exiles, urging them to continue their fight
against Castro's rule. Reinaldo had died in the early hours of December
7, and his body had been found by the woman who came by to help with his
chores. He was forty-seven.
