Havana Lunar by Robert Arellano Page A

the door open. We followed the glow of my father’s lighter down the stone stairs. At the bottom, Julia pushed open a wrought-iron gate. The subterranean chamber was cold and lightless. Cracks in the walls let a noxious miasma seep in. Strong odors of clay and decay made me breathe through my mouth.
    The floor was strewn with femurs, ribs, pelvises—everything but skulls, which fetch a decent price among practitioners of Palo Monte. Shreds of decomposing clothing matted to brown bones. Graffiti: ME CAGO EN DIOS. WELCOM TU DE MACHIN . In a hole in the stone floor lay a headless skeleton. At the center of the room three feet off the floor was a slab three feet wide, seven feet long. This is where they would rest the coffin while readying the appropriate tomb, a waystation making it easier on the pallbearers’ backs and less upsetting to the family if there was any kind of delay. There is something terrible about laying a coffin on the floor. Footstones, stacked five wide by four tall, covered most of the west wall. The north and east walls would probably have fit forty more corpses, but the cement had never been broken, probably because Fidel came along and the Asociación de Reporteros de la Habana was disbanded shortly thereafter. The dead that would have filled this monument went into exile.
    â€œWhen I joined Alejandro’s crew they brought me here,” Julia said.
    â€œWhat for?”
    â€œInitiation. First they get you high on stolen painkillers, gasoline vapors, even livestock tranquilizers.” She told me a story.
    They blindfold you and lead you down a long stairway. All you can sense is the unwholesome thickness to the air, a sulfuric moisture that makes you gag. From the corners, the stale stink of many years of urine. And the damp cold. They make you sit on the slab. Here is your fiancé. He’s wearing a glove. Hold his hand. You smell the wax of candle flames. Do you take this man to be your husband? Say I do or they will hit you. They won’t let you in. They will kill the little dog you like so much. I do. Come lie down beside him. You feel his hard shoulder against yours. He still hasn’t said anything. Turn and kiss him. His leathery lips don’t kiss back. The stifled laughter of the others in your crew echoes hollowly off the walls. I now pronounce you husband and wife. The blindfold is snapped off your face and the other girls, your new sisters, all laugh. They hold candles, and by their light you see your betrothed. A moan of revulsion catches in your throat, taps bile. You vomit once violently, gasp, vomit again. This air is not for breathing. Now you know why it is foul. Your new family’s cruel laughter echoes off the stone walls, and your priest, the pimp, cries, “Casados hasta que la muerte los separe.” Again you vomit. Someone pushes your face to his and your arms flail. Your husband’s skull rolls off the slab away from the mummified cadaver and across a floor strewn with condoms, bottles, syringes, feces, and bones. When it’s time to leave, the chulo takes the skull away with him. It never belonged to the mummy in the first place.
    â€œThis place is horrible, Julia. Let’s get out of here.”
    By the time we were back at the attic, Julia was crying in my face: “¿Porqué quieres que esté aquí?”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œI don’t have to stay, you know. I can go. Please tell me, Mano: Why are you letting me stay here?”
    â€œI don’t know why,” I told her, “but I don’t want you to go away.”
    â€œYou’ve got your hand inside me, clutched around my heart. Now you’re ripping it out. You monster!”
    Julia picked up a porcelain ashtray and threw it at my head. It bounced off the wall and broke in pieces on the floor. I was still recovering from the surprise when she rushed toward me. I thought: She’s just a child; she must be coming to apologize.