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

little more.
    “Yes … yes …”
    I squeeze tighter. Until she gets red in the face and her eyes fill up with tears. Then I stop squeezing.
    “Oh, Frances!” I say, kissing her sweetly on the mouth.
    I get up from the bed and straighten my pants. She straightens her clothes and also jumps up from the bed, searching for her shoes with her feet. I leave the room and go back to the tattered armchair to watch my favorite preacher again. It’s the end of the show. The preacher, seated at a piano, sings the blues with a splen-did black man’s voice:
    There’s just one way
And it’s not easy to get there
Oh Lord!
I know.
I know.
I know it’s not easy to reach You.
    Mr. Curbelo arrived at ten. He goes directly to the kitchen where Caridad, Josefina and another employee named Tía, who occasionally cleans up the retards Pepe and René, are waiting for him. They meet. From the porch, I see Curbelo talking to his employees with gusto. Then he claps his hands and they disperse. All of a sudden, everything’s a rush of frantic activity. Arsenio runs around the rooms placing large rolls of toilet paper at the foot of every bed. Caridad the
mulata
sends Pino, the peon, to bring, as a matter of urgency, a piece of ham for the stew from the bodega. Josefina runs from room to room armed with a broom to clear the cobwebs from the corners and ceilings. Tía, loaded down with sheets and clean towels, runs quickly through the halls changing dirty, pissed-on bed sheets. Curbelo himself breezes easily through the living room and lays new rugs, brought hastily from his own house, down over the dirty, peeling floor.
    “Inspection!” Tía says as she walks by me. “Today government inspectors are coming!”
    And so tablecloths are laid over the tables, a water fountain is installed, clean clothes are given out to the more terrifying cases, such as Reyes, Castaño and Hilda. Perfume is sprayed on the old, sweat-stained furniture and new silverware, wrapped in fine cloth napkins, is placed on the dining room table in front of every chair.
    “The old fox!” says Ida, the grande dame come to ruin, who stands next to me and eyes Curbelo with hatred as he straightens up, cleans and disguises everything. “He’s the most repulsive thing here.”
    I believe it. I also watch that old sleazebag, hating his bourgeois face and voice, and how he sponges up what little blood is left in our veins. I also think that you have to be made of the same stuff as hyenas or vultures to own this halfway house.
    I stand up. I don’t know what to do. I go toward my room slowly in search of the book of English poets. I want to reread poems by John Clare, the crazy poet from Northampton. As I turn down the hall that leads to my room, I see old one-eyed Reyes urinating in a corner like a frightened dog. As I walk by him, I raise my hand and bring it down forcefully on his frail shoulder. He shudders, terrified.
    “Mercy … ,” he says. “Have mercy on me.”
    I look at him, disgusted. His glass eye swims in yellow pus. His whole body reeks of urine.
    “How old are you?” I ask.
    “Sixty-five,” he says.
    “What did you used to do in Cuba?”
    “I sold clothes, in a store.”
    “Did you live well?”
    “Yes.”
    “How so?”
    “I had my own house, a wife, a car …”
    “What else?”
    “On Sundays, I played tennis at the Havana Yacht Club. I used to dance. I went to parties.”
    “Do you believe in God?”
    “Yes, I believe in our Lord Jesus Christ.”
    “Will you go to heaven?”
    “I think so.”
    “Will you also urinate up there?”
    He is silent. Then he looks at me with a pained smile.
    “I won’t be able to avoid it,” he says.
    I bring my fist up again and let it fall on his dirty, unkempt head forcefully. I’d like to kill him.
    “Have mercy, man,” he says to me, exaggerating his anguish. “Have mercy on me.”
    “What was your favorite song when you were young?”
    “
Blue Moon
,” he replies without hesitation.
    I don’t