Mona and Other Tales by Reinaldo Arenas Read Free Book Online Page A

pronunciation of certain words and phrases. For instance, she would begin a word in a very soft, feminine tone and end it in a heavy voice, almost masculine. I supposed it was due to her lack of knowledge of the Spanish language, which she adamantly insisted on speaking after I told her I was Cuban, though I had proposed, for her convenience, that we speak English. I could not help but laugh when she told me (perhaps to empathize with my Caribbean origins) that she had been born near the Mediterranean. I laughed not because being born there was funnier than having come into this world somewhere else but because she pronounced each syllable of the word
Mediterráneo
in a different voice. It seemed you were listening not to one woman but to five, each different from the other. When I pointed this out, I noticed that her beautiful forehead wrinkled.
    Next day was my day off, and at dinnertime she suggested going to Plum’s, an elegant restaurant that did not concur with the state of my wallet. I informed her of that fact, and she, looking at me intently but with bit of mockery, invited me to be her guest. I accepted.
    At the restaurant that evening, Elisa did something that puzzled me. The waiter, in this fancy place, forgot to bring us water. I signaled him several times. The man would promise it right away, but the water was not forthcoming. Unexpectedly, Elisa grabbed the vase adorning our table, removed the flowers, and drank the water. She quickly replaced the flowers and continued our conversation. She did this so naturally that anyone would have thought that drinking the water from a flower vase was the normal thing to do. . . . After dinner we went back to my room, and I enjoyed again, even more than before, the pleasures of her incredible body. At dawn, half-asleep, we were still kissing. I remember at one point the strange sensation of having close to my lips the thick underlip of some animal and quickly turned the light on. Next to mine, fortunately, I had only the lips of the most beautiful woman I had ever met. So fascinated was I with Elisa that I accepted her idea of my not going to Wendy’s that night, which was a Monday. She claimed that it was the only day in the week that she could spend with me, and proposed taking a ride on my motorcycle (a 1981 Yamaha) out of the city. Across the Hudson, on the New Jersey side, Elisa asked me to stop for a look at the New York skyline. I knew that for a foreigner (and a tourist, given her carefree manner), the panoramic view of Manhattan, its towers like sierras, today mysteriously disappearing in fog, had to be impressive. Even I, so used to this panorama that I seldom took the time to look at it anymore, felt the enchantment of the view and seemed to perceive an intense glow radiating from the tallest buildings. This was rather strange, since at that time, close to eleven in the morning, the skyscrapers had no reason to be lit. I turned to tell Elisa, but she, leaning on the railing, facing the river, was not listening to me: she was as if transported, looking at the strange luminosity and muttering unintelligible words that I assumed were in her mother tongue. To bring her back from her soliloquy, I approached her from behind and put my hands on her shoulders, which were covered by a heavy woolen stole. A chill ran down my spine. One of her shoulders seemed to bulge out sharply, as if the bone were out of joint and in the shape of a hook. To make sure there was a deformity that inexplicably I had not discovered until then, I felt her shoulder again. There was no deformity, however, and through the fabric my hand caressed her warm, smooth skin. Then I thought that surely I must have touched a safety pin or a shoulder pad, now back in place. At that moment Elisa turned to me and said that we could go on whenever I wished.
    We got on the motorcycle, but I couldn’t get it to start. I inspected it carefully and finally told Elisa that I thought we could not