The Halfway House (New Directions Paperbook) by Guillermo Rosales Read Free Book Online

screams. Then Napoleon, a four-foot-tall midget, fat and solid as a speed bag, comes over to me. Mother Nature placed a medieval knight’s face on that midget’s body. His face is tragically beautiful and his large, popping eyes forever wear a deeply submissive expression. He’s Colombian, and his manner of speaking is also submissive—the speech of those born to obey.
    “Sir, sir,” he says to me. “That one!” and he points at a nut named Tato, whose face looks like a former boxer’s. “That one touched me!”
    “Stop talking shit.” Tato says.
    “He touched me,” Napoleon insists. “Yesterday, in my room, he came at night and touched me!”
    I look at Tato. He doesn’t look like a homosexual. Nonetheless, the midget’s words make him sweat in embarrassment. He sweats. He sweats. He sweats. He sweats so much that in three minutes his white shirt becomes transparent.
    “Don’t pay any attention to the nuts here,” he says to me. “or you’ll end up crazy, too.”
    “He touched me!” Napoleon keeps saying.
    Then Tato gets up from his seat, laughs suddenly in an incomprehensible way and says to me carelessly, “That’s the same thing they said to Rocky Marciano in the eighth round and he got up and knocked out Joe Wolcox. So … life sucks!” and he leaves.
    Ida, the grande dame come to ruin, looks at me, outraged,
    “The things we have to see!” she says. “The things we have to hear!”
    The TV news hour is over. I get up. They call us to eat.
    Caridad the
mulata
serves the food. She also served time, back in Cuba, for stabbing her husband. She lives across the street from the halfway house, with a new husband and two huge pedigree dogs. She feeds the dogs with food from the halfway house. Not leftovers, but hot food that she takes from the nuts’ daily ration. The
locos
know it and don’t complain. If they do complain, Caridad the
mulata
tells them as plain as day to go to hell. And nothing happens. Mr. Curbelo never finds out. Or if he does find out, he says, as always, “My employees have my complete confidence.” So none of what you’re saying is true. The nuts lose again and realize that it’s best to keep their mouths shut. Caridad the
mulata
would like to make the stew every day so she can get Mr. Curbelo to pay her those good thirty dollars more. That’s why she says to the nuts all the time, “Complain! Protest! Today’s peas are inedible! The truth is that you’re a bunch of pussies!”
    But none of the nuts complain, and Curbelo saves his money by continuing to make the stew every day with his little bourgeois face.
    “Do you want to move to a different table?” Caridad asks me at dinner time.
    “Yes.”
    “Don’t you like those disgusting
locos
?”
    “No.”
    “Come on,” she says, “sit here,” and she swipes the midget Napoleon out of his seat and seats me in his place. And so I stop sitting at the untouchables’ table, with Hilda, Reyes, Pepe and René. Now I’m at a table with Eddy, Tato, Pino, Pedro, Ida and Louie. That afternoon we had rice, raw lentils, three pieces of lettuce and
salpicón
. I had three spoonfuls and spit the fourth out onto my plate. I left. As I pass by Mr. Curbelo’s desk, I see Arsenio eating. He’s eating on a plastic tray, brought from a nearby diner. He’s eating with a fork and knife, and his food is yellow rice, pork,
yuca
and red tomatoes. And beer, too.
    “Hey,” he says to me when I pass by. “Take a seat.”
    I sit down. He waves at me with his hand to wait until he’s done. I wait. He finishes eating. He takes all the leftovers and throws them out, along with the tray, in the waste basket. The empty can of beer, too. He burps. He looks at me with lost eyes. He takes out a pack of cigarettes and offers me one. We smoke. Then he says, “Okay … let’s get right to it. Do you want to be my assistant here?”
    “No,” I say. “I’m not interested.”
    “It will be great,” he advises me.
    “I’m not