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Fiction

The Christmas Tree

By Mabel Cuesta
Translated from Spanish by Erica Mena
Cuban writer Mabel Cuesta combines memories of early love and new traditions.

Someone had placed a giant tree in the hotel lobby, a pine made of unrecyclable plastics. We’re in a strange land and Christmas is nearing. We see these things with a particular disdain, a particular apathy of islanders steeped in a system that alternates beauty with politics. Christmas, for us, is nothing more than faint nostalgia, our mothers’ childhoods, the tree in the corner of a color photo from cousins in Miami, the wool purse brought by someone from Russia when the country had a different, more inclusive name.

We’re in a neighboring country and someone put a tree just inside the door to the hotel, let’s call it luxurious. There’s a small girl sitting in front of the tree. She talks to it. She talks to it with a peace that is reminiscent of another measurement for sorrow and guilt. A guilt I want to call my own.

I came to this other island to exorcize my demons. There’s something essentially lazy in that word. I cried for my lack of sorrow more than from anger, more than from knowing that I was to blame. The girl talks to the tree. She asks for things and people, alternating. She says: oh, Santa, I want a house for my dolls, I want a little sister to play with, I want a mom, I want the last Harry Potter book, I want, Santa, I want, I want . . . I want . . .

In this hotel I’ve committed some unforgivable sins and I don’t feel shame for my pain; I feel nothing more than a few movements, a few rich fragments of sound: the girl asking for things, the hand grazing, sliding down my neck igniting a delirium of the body, the need for me to atone, she that I’ve come to atone to . . .

I let Luz’s hand cross my neck, and drift under my shirt to rest on my shoulders, and stay for a while caressing my wounded shoulder, my wounded heart, my wounded back . . . To stay, to caress . . . Only this moment and the girl’s voice that asks and asks in a whisper . . . there is nothing beyond the sense of not inhabiting myself, being without will, just a deep sense that I am not in myself any more than if I was flowing from the voice speaking to the tree, from the hand that holds me here.

When I tried to cross the lobby with my inability to be alive and sad, the girl’s voice, or maybe it was the image of the tree, stopped me. There was a time, before, when I dreamed, pulse racing, of bursting into the rooms that my feet take me across. Then, Luz was no more than a word spoken at random in meetings, supposedly impromptu; then I wasn’t dreaming of her crossing plazas and airports to drink of my impiety, my lack of sorrow. I didn’t think my skin would become worn beneath her hand nor how closely I would listen to the desires of the girl in front of the tree. I didn’t think my mouth would say, by the ocean: listen, Luz, how you speak to me even when you are as silent as the rocks . . .

In this strange land I met Luz and allowed her to caress every shadowed vortex. More, I let myself stay by her side for a whole day and night, and in doing so learned the source of all poems; not Whitman’s, but the ones that left her mouth, returning to me the guilt of pleasure’s mystery. Leaving so that my wicked foot could stop for one moment and I could hear the girl’s prayer, the little girl begging for what she does not yet have.

The tree and the child make clear to me, with certainty, how much I’ve been asking all along. I knew the first time I saw her that our natures were identical, in our habit of not feeling the consequence of any act. I told Luz this. I spoke of my impiety, of my danger; but she insisted on teaching me the origin of every verse from her mouth. She read fragments from photos from the back room of memories of other days . . . my back pleased with her touch, the rock of my heart soft with her saliva.

In this way we invented cycles, cabalistic eternities, doors that opened onto marvelous mornings that lived only in the word. I want to listen to the girl while Luz crosses from one side of the lobby to the other. Hers is the despair, mine the guilt. We both know that we can’t save ourselves from our own corrosion; but we insist on staying to decipher the message of those cycles.

She says I love you in Stonehenge and in Copán and in the salt of the wave in the Caribe where I’ve been waiting for so long . . . and I say in Havana there’s a perfume shop that speaks your name, carved into marble while I seek you in the air upon which I cross the air. When I’ve gathered my scattered self in the lobby of the hotel, I remember, I remember you: I’m the air itself . . . and I see the girl asking for so much that I’m embarrassed. I leave my consciousness scattered; I want to tie myself, some complete piece of self, to the branch of the artificially green pine. I want to be the stain of light that separates each autumn leaf . . . your eyes, eyes from a time when queens gracefully, carelessly, perched in coaches, ready to go . . . one city and another . . . the unchanging order “to the palace, coachmen” . . . eyes like those of the rulers of every room, queens crowned by the magic of being queens . . . the girl in the careless magic of asking blessings from the tree in full light where Luz waits tremulously.

A tree I wanted, a way to be close to the depths of desire. How much I asked for has been given . . . I said, kneeling, turn yourself to gold, and gold, like the light, was made . . . all my desire reduced to the moment in which I feel the urgent need to lift the little girl from the floor, hold her in my arms and close her mouth, let her suckle my breast, in the same way Luz had showed me the way back to wholeness . . . but the tree dulls my step and I leave it, knowing still that Christmas is a strange time for islanders.

© Mabel Cuesta. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2012 by Erica Mena. All rights reserved.

English Spanish (Original)

Someone had placed a giant tree in the hotel lobby, a pine made of unrecyclable plastics. We’re in a strange land and Christmas is nearing. We see these things with a particular disdain, a particular apathy of islanders steeped in a system that alternates beauty with politics. Christmas, for us, is nothing more than faint nostalgia, our mothers’ childhoods, the tree in the corner of a color photo from cousins in Miami, the wool purse brought by someone from Russia when the country had a different, more inclusive name.

We’re in a neighboring country and someone put a tree just inside the door to the hotel, let’s call it luxurious. There’s a small girl sitting in front of the tree. She talks to it. She talks to it with a peace that is reminiscent of another measurement for sorrow and guilt. A guilt I want to call my own.

I came to this other island to exorcize my demons. There’s something essentially lazy in that word. I cried for my lack of sorrow more than from anger, more than from knowing that I was to blame. The girl talks to the tree. She asks for things and people, alternating. She says: oh, Santa, I want a house for my dolls, I want a little sister to play with, I want a mom, I want the last Harry Potter book, I want, Santa, I want, I want . . . I want . . .

In this hotel I’ve committed some unforgivable sins and I don’t feel shame for my pain; I feel nothing more than a few movements, a few rich fragments of sound: the girl asking for things, the hand grazing, sliding down my neck igniting a delirium of the body, the need for me to atone, she that I’ve come to atone to . . .

I let Luz’s hand cross my neck, and drift under my shirt to rest on my shoulders, and stay for a while caressing my wounded shoulder, my wounded heart, my wounded back . . . To stay, to caress . . . Only this moment and the girl’s voice that asks and asks in a whisper . . . there is nothing beyond the sense of not inhabiting myself, being without will, just a deep sense that I am not in myself any more than if I was flowing from the voice speaking to the tree, from the hand that holds me here.

When I tried to cross the lobby with my inability to be alive and sad, the girl’s voice, or maybe it was the image of the tree, stopped me. There was a time, before, when I dreamed, pulse racing, of bursting into the rooms that my feet take me across. Then, Luz was no more than a word spoken at random in meetings, supposedly impromptu; then I wasn’t dreaming of her crossing plazas and airports to drink of my impiety, my lack of sorrow. I didn’t think my skin would become worn beneath her hand nor how closely I would listen to the desires of the girl in front of the tree. I didn’t think my mouth would say, by the ocean: listen, Luz, how you speak to me even when you are as silent as the rocks . . .

In this strange land I met Luz and allowed her to caress every shadowed vortex. More, I let myself stay by her side for a whole day and night, and in doing so learned the source of all poems; not Whitman’s, but the ones that left her mouth, returning to me the guilt of pleasure’s mystery. Leaving so that my wicked foot could stop for one moment and I could hear the girl’s prayer, the little girl begging for what she does not yet have.

The tree and the child make clear to me, with certainty, how much I’ve been asking all along. I knew the first time I saw her that our natures were identical, in our habit of not feeling the consequence of any act. I told Luz this. I spoke of my impiety, of my danger; but she insisted on teaching me the origin of every verse from her mouth. She read fragments from photos from the back room of memories of other days . . . my back pleased with her touch, the rock of my heart soft with her saliva.

In this way we invented cycles, cabalistic eternities, doors that opened onto marvelous mornings that lived only in the word. I want to listen to the girl while Luz crosses from one side of the lobby to the other. Hers is the despair, mine the guilt. We both know that we can’t save ourselves from our own corrosion; but we insist on staying to decipher the message of those cycles.

She says I love you in Stonehenge and in Copán and in the salt of the wave in the Caribe where I’ve been waiting for so long . . . and I say in Havana there’s a perfume shop that speaks your name, carved into marble while I seek you in the air upon which I cross the air. When I’ve gathered my scattered self in the lobby of the hotel, I remember, I remember you: I’m the air itself . . . and I see the girl asking for so much that I’m embarrassed. I leave my consciousness scattered; I want to tie myself, some complete piece of self, to the branch of the artificially green pine. I want to be the stain of light that separates each autumn leaf . . . your eyes, eyes from a time when queens gracefully, carelessly, perched in coaches, ready to go . . . one city and another . . . the unchanging order “to the palace, coachmen” . . . eyes like those of the rulers of every room, queens crowned by the magic of being queens . . . the girl in the careless magic of asking blessings from the tree in full light where Luz waits tremulously.

A tree I wanted, a way to be close to the depths of desire. How much I asked for has been given . . . I said, kneeling, turn yourself to gold, and gold, like the light, was made . . . all my desire reduced to the moment in which I feel the urgent need to lift the little girl from the floor, hold her in my arms and close her mouth, let her suckle my breast, in the same way Luz had showed me the way back to wholeness . . . but the tree dulls my step and I leave it, knowing still that Christmas is a strange time for islanders.

Árbol de navidad

En el lobby del hotel han colocado un enorme árbol, un pino hecho de plásticos imposibles de reciclar. Estamos en una tierra extranjera y se acerca la navidad. Miramos estas cosas con cierto desdén, cierta abulia de isleñas traspasadas por el orden alternativo de la belleza o la política. La navidad, para nosotras, no es más que una  nostalgia moderada en la memoria, la infancia de nuestras madres, el árbol esquinado en la foto a colores de los primos viajados a Miami, la bolsita de lana traída por alguien desde Rusia cuando el país tenía otro nombre más abarcador.

Estamos en tierra vecina y han colocado un árbol justo a la entrada del hotel, vamos a llamarlo lujoso; hay una niña pequeñita que se sienta frente al árbol y le habla, le habla con una paz que convoca otra medición para el dolor y la culpa. Una culpa que quiero llamar mía.

He llegado a esta otra  isla para expiar todos mis demonios. Algo total que se hace indolente en la palabra. He llorado a mi ausencia de dolor más que a la rabia, más que al saberme dueña del daño. La niña habla al árbol. Pide objetos  o personas, los alterna. La niña dice: ah, papá Noel, quiero una casa para meter dentro las muñecas, quiero una hermanita para jugar, quiero a mamá, quiero el último libro del héroe de los magos, quiero, papá Noel, quiero, quiero… quiero…

En este hotel he cometido algunas faltas insalvables y no siento pena de mi pena; no siento más que  algunos gestos, algunos fragmentos de sonoridad: la niña que pide, la mano que pasa, se desliza por mi cuello trayéndome del delirio al cuerpo, la falta que me expía, la que he venido a expiar…

He dejado que la mano de Luz me atraviese el cuello, que se meta bajo la camiseta  y se pose en los hombros, que se quede largo rato acariciando la herida del hombro, la herida del pecho, la herida de la espalda… Que se quede, que acaricie… Solo este gesto y la voz de la niña que pide y pide en un susurro… no hay más sensación que esta certeza de no pertenecerme, ninguna voluntad, solo un profundo saber que no estoy en mí más que si consigo circular desde la voz que le habla al árbol, desde la mano que me sujeta allá en el fondo.

Cuando quise atravesar el lobby con mi incapacidad para estar viva y dolorosa, la voz de la niña, o quizá fue la imagen del árbol, me hicieron detener. Hubo un tiempo atrás donde me soñé palpitando si conseguía asaltar las estancias que ahora mi pie cruza; entonces Luz no era más que  una palabra soltada al azar en medio de una reunión, supuestamente improvisada y no la soñaba recorriendo plazas y aeropuertos para venir a beber de mi impiedad, mi vacío de sensaciones dolorosas. No pensó mi piel que iba a ser rozada por su mano ni en cuánto habría de escuchar al mensaje de la niña frente al árbol y no pensó mi boca que diría frente al mar: escucha, Luz cómo te hablo aunque tenga la garganta cerrada por las rocas…

En la tierra extraña encontré a Luz y permití que acariciara cada vórtice de sombra. Permití, además, que me dejara a su lado un día y una noche, así aprendí el origen de todos los poemas; no los de Whitman, sino los que salieron de su boca, regresándome de la culpa al misterio del placer, dejando que mi pie, avieso, pudiera detenerse solo un instante y escuchar al rezo de la niña, pequeñita, clamando por cuánto no le ha sido dado todavía.

El árbol y la chiquilla traen hasta la mí la certeza de cuánto he estado pidiendo desde siempre. Supe, al verla, que éramos de una naturaleza idéntica en su costumbre de no sentir la vastedad de ningún acto. Dije a Luz estas cosas. Hablé de mi impiedad, de mi peligro; pero ella insistió en enseñarme el origen de cada verso salido de su boca. Leyó fragmentos de las fotos con que me hablaba desde el cuarto de atrás, en la memoria de otros días… mi espalda agradecida en la caricia, la roca de mi corazón ahora suave en su saliva.

Así, nos inventamos ciclos, cabalísticas eternas, puertas que se abren a un mañana prodigioso que solo vive en la palabra. Quiero escuchar a la niña mientras Luz pasea de una punta a la otra del lobby. Suya es la desesperación, mía la culpa. Ambas sabemos que no podemos salvarnos de cuánto nos corroe; pero insistimos en quedarnos a descifrar el mensaje de los cielos.

Ella dice te quiero en Stonehenge y en Copán y en la sal de la ola del Caribe donde llevo esperando tanto tiempo… y digo yo en La Habana hay una tienda perfumada que habla de tu nombre,  permanencia de mármol cuando te busco en el aire con que atravieso al aire. Cuando consigo volver a mi esencia tan desperdigada en el lobby del hotel, recuerdo, te recuerdo: soy el aire mismo… y veo a la niña pidiendo tantas cosas que consigo avergonzarme. Me salgo de mi conciencia en la falta de unidad; quiero atarme, ser algunos trozos completos en la rama de pino verde, artificialmente coloreado. Quiero ser la mancha de luz que separa cada hoja de otoño… tus ojos, ojos  del tiempo en que las reinas colocaban suaves, despreocupadas, el pie en el estribo de los coches… una ciudad y otra ciudad… el grito idéntico cochero a palacio… ojos como esos de las dueñas de todos los salones, reinas del encanto de ser reinas… la niña en el encanto despreocupado de pedir bendiciones al árbol en medio de la luz donde Luz me espera temblorosa.

Un árbol he querido, una manera de estar cerca de los abismos del deseo. Cuánto pedí  me ha sido dado… dije arrodillada hágase el oro y el oro, como la luz, se hizo… todo mi deseo reducido al momento en que siento la urgencia de levantar a la pequeña del suelo, retenerla entre mis brazos y cerrar su boca, darle de lactar de mis senos del mismo modo en que Luz me ha mostrado el camino de regreso a la unidad… pero el árbol me entorpece el paso y yo lo dejo, sé que aún la Navidad es un tiempo extraño a las isleñas.

 

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