Three Trapped Tigers by Guillermo Cabrera Infante

Author:Guillermo Cabrera Infante [Infante, Guillermo Cabrera]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Fiction, Classics, Contemporary, Caribbean & Latin American
ISBN: 9781564783790
Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
Published: 1965-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Virgilio Piñera

(1914-1966)

AFTERNOON OF THE KILLERS

I believe with my heart crossed that nobody ever knows whom he is working for. This handsome young man, Mornard (here and entre nous, I can say that his real name is Santiago Mercader and that he is Cuban; I mention it because I know that all this is food for the gossipmongers), went to Mexico to kill on purpose Leon D. Trotsky, this lion of Russian letters, while he was showing the master some of his writings for him to read and criticize. Trotsky never knew that Mornard was working as a ghost writer for Stalin. Mornard never knew that Trotsky was working like a dog for literature. Stalin never knew that Trotsky and Mornard were working like slaves (excuse the simile) for history.

When Mornard arrived in the lands of the Aztecs the night was as dark as an inkpot and his intentions were black as ink or as the night, good only for moonshining. The assassin was not, as is usually the case with epigones, an original mind. He has of course his historical antecedents, as the history of this vale of tears is full of violence. This is why I have so great a hatred for historians, because I detest violence with all the strength of my soul. But violence seems to be the motivating force of this piccolo mondo that we live in. Although there is violence and violence. And then some.

For example, there is no doubt that the French aristocracy was in a state of decadence when the Revolution and Danton, Marat and company decimated it. But only a little before it had what is called its golden age, son age d’or. This is an epoch which I know inside out, because I haven’t neglected to read a single one of the memoirs that were written during that epoch or before or after and . . . but not to weary you with an erudition that I detest as I detest all specialists, scholars, etcetera, I must say I am thoroughly acquainted with all the tittle-tattle of the Aristocratie. An aristocracy which, let it be said in passing, was rotten through and through, like the Palais de Versailles, which had to be abandoned every six months while everyone went to the Louvre, because the staircases and corridors and salons had been converted into a pigsty with all the feces and stools of nobles and aristocrats. The same thing happened six months later with the Louvre. Did you know that the royal dentist of that time instead of pulling out a back tooth of Louis XIV extracted a piece of bone the same size from the soft palate and the poor man contracted so great an infection that he had such a case of halitosis that nobody was able to go near the Sun King for fear of getting nasal sunstroke? Just like that. But this could never have been sufficient justification for a quid pro quo like the guillotine, because cutting off your ruler’s head is not the best way of curing him of bad breath.

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