The Lazarus Rumba Read Online Free PDF Page B

her husband away. She grumbled to the dark heavens, begged to know what kind of God lets the whole world go mad, just like that, quicker than the graying of a hair.
    The following morning Teodoro awoke before dawn. He stumbled out of bed by himself, stepped out of his pajamas and underpants and, naked, shuffled to the bathroom.
    â€œWhat are you doing?” doña Adela said, following him, weary-eyed, for she had not slept at all, listening to his heavy breathing (gasping for air at each take), expecting it at any moment to cease, especially when it became most desperate, his neck clenching, the veins in his brow deepening, his vocal chords plucked by a boding air like the heightened last notes of a symphony.
    â€œVoy a cagar and then I am running a bath and then going out.”
    â€œOut where? You can’t even walk. We practically had to carry you here last night.”
    â€œNot to the sea, that’s for sure.”
    â€œYou’re not going anywhere. Gonzalo is coming at eight.”
    â€œFor what?”
    â€œTo … to give you your last rites.”
    â€œHow pleasant.” Teodoro sat on the toilet. He farted loudly. He looked down and shook his head. “So big and so useless …
not
to the sea that’s for sure.” He hawked and spit on the tile floor, then looked up at his wife cautiously as if he were a child that had just committed a grievous wrong. “Adela … Adela, when I die throw me into the sea. I want to ride the white dolphins, the ones we saw in Varadero. Remember how in love we were there, Adela. Bury me there.” He grimaced and bit his thumbs and began to weep. “My feet hurt, Adela, my feet hurt so much, how am I going to go out if my feet won’t take me.”
    â€œNo seas dramático. Call me when you are ready,” doña Adela said. “I’ll have Alicia bathe you. Gonzalo will be here soon.” She shut the door and went to the kitchen to make coffee. Her daughter was already there, in the half-morning shadows, at one corner of the long kitchen table, drinking a glass of milk.
    â€œHe’s going to make it, isn’t he, mamá?”
    â€œYes, mija, for now. But he is very ill.” She set the cafetera on the flame and just when the first thick black spurts of coffee came bubbling up, they heard the loud thud in the bathroom.
    â€œDios santo,” doña Adela said and grabbed her daughter’s hand and led her from the kitchen. The bathroom door was jammed, Teodoro’s fallen body behind it. They pushed without overdue force, as if in respect for the corpse they knew blocked their way. Teodoro’s body lay sprawled and naked on the bathroom floor, a razor blade in one hand, half his face shaven, the other half still foamy with suds. Doña Adela put two fingers to her husband’s neck, then she unrolled some toilet paper and wiped her husband’s still-soiled bottom. And as she did she spoke to him with the assuredness that he could still hear her: “Qué pena, mi bello, none of them will ever see you again.” She grabbed the razor from his hand and handed it to her daughter. “Finish shaving your father, I don’t want Gonzalo finding him like this. I am going to go call him.”
    â€œMamá, I am only a girl,” Alicia protested.
    â€œNot any more, mi cielo, not any more.”
    â€œSí, no lo digo por decirlo,” doña Adela said. “I too have known sorrow. I remember many an afternoon after he died sitting out there on that porchswing, literally gurgling up this greenish-yellow bile (I could never digest el almuerzo, no matter how lightly I ate), and like a fool I collected this bile, day by day, and set it in a closed jar on my nightstand, as if I could measure to the exact quarter ounce the amount of venom I had been forced to swallow. Yes, I too almost went mad. But when I could not fight it anymore, I let it in me. Sea lo que sea, Gonzalo, we have to