Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Ernesto Mestre was born in Cuba in 1964. His family emigrated to Spain in 1972, and later that year to Miami, Florida. He graduate from Tulane University and currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.

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The Lazarus Rumba

Picador USA

Chapter One

The Rumbas in Beethoven's Violin Concerto

In the middle of morning Mass, as Father Gonzalo led the sparse congregationinto the Apostles' Creed, fragments of memories, heavy and suddenas summer raindrops, began to tincture the familiar fabric of the prayer.He remembered the seawater that was green, its foamy crests soapsudswhite. He remembered the river water that was brown, its ripply hiccupspiss yellow. Sometimes the sea flows into the river. In the sea he is movedby the hands of the Lord. In the river he must swim. The river is crowdedwith barges. The revelers on the barges are dressed in elegant costumes.They are celebrating a once-in-a-lifetime victory. They dance a rumba.Their waste is flushed into the river. He swims by unnoticed, his lipspursed, trying not to taste the water.

    It was silent. The drone of the Creed had lifted and melted in the airlike incense. He hurried the rest of the service. After Communion, hemuttered for the faithful to go in peace and snuck out a side door near thealtar. The congregation?less than twenty faithful?remained inside thechurch. Father Gonzalo knew they were not waiting for him. They alwaysdid this, extending their stay inside the cool dark home of the Lord toavoid the rainy-season mugginess.

    He passed through a covered archway into the rectory. He removed hisrobes as he walked. Anita, his servant, had left the screen door to the rectorykitchen open again. Father Gonzalo slammed it shut and sat at thesquare wooden table set for one. She was at the stove, her back to him. Sheignored the noise of the door. He scratched a mosquito bite on his neck.

    "Los mosquitos nos comen," he said. "I've told you to keep that doorshut."

    Anita came to him, bent his head forward, and examined the bite. "I'llput something on it later. Eat your breakfast first."

    She placed a cup of cafecito negro in front of him first and then hiseggs lightly scrambled with the buttered and sugared toast. Father Gonzaloate quietly. Anita drank her coffee standing behind him.

    "Don't forget you have to go see doña Adela's daughter."

    "!Sí, ya sé! How can I forget? It's early yet; I told her I'd be there atone."

    He finished breakfast and went upstairs to his room and removed allhis clothes except for the pair of baggy cotton undergarments that coveredhalf his slight, brown frame from above the navel to just below the knees.He washed his face in the basin by the window. He grabbed his cherrywoodrosary from the top drawer of his dresser, went to his bed, threwaside the tattered mosquitero and lay facedown with his hands crossed underhis chin.

    Anita knocked and without waiting for an answer entered his room.She sat by the bed.

    "Ay, Virgencita, it looks like a demon was pricking you with his fingernailslast night! Quédate ahí, I'll be right back."

    He did not notice her go and return.

    She set a pan on his night table and wrung a cloth over it. She passedit over his upper back. It felt cool and soothing till she pressed it to one ofthe bites. He lost his place on the rosary and began anew with the seconddecade of Hail Marys.

    "Magnesian salt," she said. "It disinfects them."

    "Sí, ya sé," he said. "Do me spiders."

    She pressed the cloth to a few more bites. He pinched hard, betweenhis index finger and thumb, the fourth bead of the second decade of therosary till it left its imprint on his flesh.

    "Do me spiders," he repeated.

    She put down the cloth and did him spiders with both hands, all tenfingers wiggling and just barely grazing his flesh. The spiders dancednimbly around each bite, like celebrants around a fire, tickling the surroundingskin with their thready steps, then they moved downward on hisback single file through the ridge on the right side, spreading again anddancing more freely on the soft field just north of his boxer waistband. Asshe moved down his legs, past his swollen ankles to the bottom of his tendertoes, he felt an excruciating bliss that had nothing to do with theprayers he was murmuring; he sighed, he hummed to the joy of the spiderdance and lost his place on the rosary again.

"I too have known sorrow," doña Adela said to him as she let him into theparlor and took his thick-woven straw hat. She pressed her cheek to hisand Father Gonzalo smelled her breath of desolation. She wore a looseprinted housedress and slippers. Her hair was tied back in a tight bun sothat the gray roots were accentuated and the many frizzled strands thathad come loose set her face in a shadowy ruff apart from her small body,which moved in quick little bursts like a squirrel or a nervous child. FatherGonzalo followed a few steps behind her into the kitchen and doñaAdela latched together the shuttered door and pushed open the windowover the sink.

    "Todo igual, coño. It's been two weeks and nothing has changed?allday locked in my room and wrapped in that musty old shawl she foundthe devil knows where. I think it was my mother's (la pobre, queen pazdescanse). Y lo peor, now she has stopped eating altogether. She says theworld smells too much of the dead and that it ruins her appetite. Imagínate,cosas de locos."

    She searched the pockets of her printed housedress, till she came acrossa folded envelope, worn with handling. She handed it to Father Gonzalo,informing him that the police captain had brought it to her the afternoonbefore. Father Gonzalo examined the contents of the envelope and shookhis head and muttered that something had definitely gone awry whenthey could no longer properly bury their dead.

    "A number. That is all the consolation we get for their murder ... anumber. `For obvious reasons, and in the interest of national security, therevolutionary authorities reserve the right to bury its traitors.' Imagínate,when was that law passed? I have not shown it to her. I can't."

    She offered him something to eat. Father Gonzalo shook his head. Hewas not hungry. "Un cafecito nada más, por favor, Adela. Then I'll go seeher. Maybe she'll talk to me today. Maybe the fasting has awakened herspirit."

    "She talks to no one except her cousin. He returned to town as soon ashe heard what had happened. He spends hours with her. Pero no sé ...how much good can he do when he is as faithless as a gypsy, behaves morelike a child than she does."

    "Adela, she is not a child. She is twenty-six."

    "She is behaving like a child. She is not the first woman to lose a husband."

    "Sí, verdad, Adela," Father Gonzalo shook the letter in his hand, "butthe manner in which she lost him?"

    "What about the manner in which I lost mine! You of all people knowtoo well. It was enough to have buried myself with him, wrapped in ashroud of shame! But I endured (pues gracias a tí y a la Virgencita) and Iwill not have my daughter go mad. She too will endure, ?No es así, Gonzalo?Won't she? Ay, no sé cuanto más puedo. Estoy completamente desesperada."She tried to hide her tears as she set the...