Cohiba

The Brasileira was singing in the shower when I got in. The bedside lamp in her room was on, a scarf hung over the shade. Her clothes were scattered across the floor: papers, books, speakers, records, incense, oils, creams, make-up, sweets, powdered milk . . . The bed was unmade, photos stuck to the wall. An empty milk carton was left on the kitchen table. A pair of panties and a lace bra hung from a rocking chair made of ribbons of blue plastic that sat on the living-room balcony. For someone who had landed less than twenty-four hours earlier, it was a prodigy of chaos. I set her underclothes down on the table. They were still wet, recently washed. Outside there was no sign of dawn. A herd of rickety goats passed in front of the apartment building, harangued by a mulatto every bit as skinny as them. She came out of the bathroom in the nude. After a few steps she stopped, when she saw first my bag and then me, sitting in front of the balcony. She leaned against the wall, hands behind her back. We talked until daybreak. Not once did she ever try to dress or to cover herself up, but let a small puddle of water form at her feet, which the breeze that came in from the balcony slowly but surely dried up. At seven, she said we needed to sleep for a few hours before meeting the maestro.

At five minutes to ten in the morning, a black car with smoked windows appears like a mirage at the end of the palm-lined road. The ten of us attending the workshop wait in front of the rest of the students, the cameras, the journalists at the bottom of the stairs. There is a rumour going around that this will be the last workshop the maestro teaches. Birri – the school’s director – helps him out of the car. García Márquez emerges sheathed in a blue jumpsuit, cleaning a pair of spectacles that get lost for a moment in Birri’s white beard when they separate from their embrace. Smile for the hyenas, he whispers, giving us hugs in front of the journalists’ cameras. We follow him up a floor, to the classroom. He doesn’t let anyone else in except us. Inside, the microphones are already turned on. Every word is recorded and belongs to the Film School of San Antonio de los Baños. So . . . who has the big idea? García Márquez asks. He’s having fun with us. Or, rather: he’s making fun of us. Your mission is to deliver one good idea, only one, he says, fishing around in his jumpsuit pockets until he finds what he’s looking for: an inhaler. He takes a hit from it and his eyes come back to life. If you don’t have one, go out and find it. Intimidated to the point of going mute; when he leaves ten minutes later not one of us has been able to decide yet whether his voraciousness is of the vampire variety or is merely contempt. One thing has become clear: screenwriters, for the maestro, are no more than a breed of lackeys.