Made in Saturn by Rita Indiana

Author:Rita Indiana
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: contemporary fiction;literary fiction;translated fiction;painting;Goya;mythology;contemporary art;failed artist;Caribbean;poverty;colonialism;Dominican;Cuba;Havana;drama;love story;realism;revolution;post-revolution;politics;generational conflict;heroin;addiction
Publisher: And Other Stories Publishing
Published: 2020-01-15T17:20:40+00:00

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“The park,” Argenis requested, handing the coins for his fare to the driver of the concho. Without turning his small head, the man took the payment with a hand extended backwards, taking advantage of the red light to tell someone on the other end of his cell phone call to put six eggs on to boil and get a couple of rolls ready.

Argenis imagined the woman on the other end of the line peeling the hard-boiled eggs and mashing them with salt and oil until they turned into a bright yellow paste that she’d spread on a couple of white rolls recently delivered from the colmado. The imagined scent made him hungry, but the various stenches with which passengers had cured the vinyl of the car seats were much stronger.

The door was missing its window pane and Argenis stuck his head out to breathe some fresh air, but outside it smelled like spoiled milk, and like the bitter, liquid scent of rotting vegetables. It smelled of human shit, of layers of sooty sweat, of the dust raised by Haitian workers’ drills. It smelled like dead rats, like a congregation of sick pigeons, like a drunk’s vomit, and of the green stew of water that had been standing in the ditches for months and months. The woman on the other end of the call scraped a layer off this mixture with her knife, like scraping a stick of butter. Argenis could see pieces of human fingers with dirty nails compacted inside that stick, and then the driver scarfing the disgusting sandwich down into a nearly toothless mouth.

“Artistic ability,” Professor Herman had called the involuntary ease with which her student mixed reality and invention, repeating it to calm him when, three years ago now, she had come to the mental health ward of the UCE to bring him books and cigarettes. She had pulled these gifts from a Hermès bag, smiling behind her huge, expensive sunglasses. Now that the Dominican Liberation Party had won, she would soon be named director of the Museum of Modern Art. Her training and career meant she deserved the post, but they would have given it to her even if she were illiterate, just because of her mother’s position in the party.

As he got out of the car in front of Independence Cemetery and looked through the iron gate, Argenis saw a chubby woman lighting a black candle placed next to a blackened pot of rice and beans on top of a tomb. Behind her, two fifty-something mulatto men held the same color candles and prayed, eyes closed, shirts stained with sweat. The woman caught Argenis’s gaze, raising her eyebrows like she would raise her arms to challenge an opponent in a street fight. Then she brought a bottle of gin to her mouth, took a swig, and blew, spraying it over the food they were offering to the Baron of the Cemetery. Under the rays of the sun the atomized liquid momentarily formed a little rainbow in the air.

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