Firefly by Severo Sarduy Page A

the notaries abandoned their cubicles, he would leisurely take the last warm sips and begin to ruminate on Ada and the interloping quacks. Paper cup in hand, he would go down into the yard and stand next to the fishpond by the gate that led to the basket workshop. He would watch the Gypsies weave in silence, eat standing up, and on Sundays and after baptisms (they were believers and prolific) sing and dance, lifting their colorful ruffled skirts, clapping their hands, and stamping their heels. He watched them through the wrought iron, their arms raised very high to sketch arabesques, their bodies stretching and twisting as if they yearned to catch fire. Everything they did seemed to be one big party, cante jondo, heralds of Ada, rum, deep cool breaths that reached the bottom of his lungs, imminence of definitive departure, the red and gold of the waving skirts, the white of the baggy sleeves, the silver of the Moorishbracelets. And the gravelly voice, the voice of rum, and the arms reaching up so the hands could scribble on the sky.
    Everything was a party. Yet in those inaccessible songs, in the scratchy voices worn by alcohol and the waning light of afternoon, he thought he heard something from his childhood, from the time when people nailed the doors shut to keep out the screams of the spirits: the innocent children, throats slit by the Inquisition, back with their interminable wailing, their voices rent but recognizable. For the voice is the only thing that remains intact after death.

H AVEN’T YOU EVER SEEN A BAT SMOKE?
    Firefly tried to forget that inopportune visit or chalk it up to his imagination or to drink. Now he could enter and leave his office hideaway whenever he wished: He had his own key and was in charge of the door bolts. His voice was still high-pitched like a bamboo flute, but rubbing his sex against the silk of the recamier now shook him from tip to toe and did not end dry like before. Upon rising, he would pull a page from one of the files, crumple it in his hand, and wipe up the white stain.
    Of the outside world, he was now familiar with Plaza del Vapor, the rooming houses painted indigo, mustard, and green under the royal poincianas with their tentacle roots. He knew a bird shop where an old man in thick glasses trained canaries and the window of a crippled woman who painted piggy banks. He could also distinguish the aromas of a Chinese restaurant, ofthe talcum women wore, and of fresh-cut wood from a sawmill, which was his favorite – it was like sharpening a pencil. He knew where they sold oysters in little cups, where there was a blue lamp, always lit, shining on women who never sat down.
    He spoke with no one, never set foot in a store, never stayed out after sundown, not even on Sunday. He had only one set of clothes, which he washed at night. If he had a beer, he drank it alone.
    One Sunday he returned from the harbor. He had seen an Italian ship festooned with bunting for a party on board. Women in tight-fitting white silk gowns and peacock-feathered hats had been tossing paper streamers in the air and flinging empty champagne bottles off the stern. Bursts of laughter reached all the way to the park, where Sunday strollers reveled in the celebration.
    He opened the big door, passed the threadbare furniture, shoved aside a stool with his foot, took the stairs to the mezzanine and on up to the second floor. His mind was not on his whereabouts, rather on the words he had heard from the ship. A woman dressed to the nines had leaned over the first-class rail and, between giggles, yelled, “I’m not expecting anyone, but I’m convinced someone is going to come!”
    He was about to enter the moth heaven that was his room,when he saw pressed against an office door, standing stock-still, a figure he could not make out in the darkness of the hallway. Someone was peeking through a keyhole or glued to the wood listening, apparently not even breathing, eavesdropping on what was